X-Men: Sons of Logan (Book One: Terminus)
by Hori
Summary: In a hellish future, Logan's secret team of assassins and warriors fight to avenge their master's death, and save a human race that helped wipe out the X-Men and mutantkind. STORY COMPLETE.
1. Prologue

_**Bayville, New York. 2034.**_

The sky threatened of rain in the fall afternoon. The air was thick with moisture and waning heat as clouds roiled and gathered in the sky above. In the warm light of the sun, which still pierced the cloud cover far in the distance, Xavier's School for the Gifted was aglow with tones of ochre and red as the sunlight shone on it's aged, ivy-covered brick edifice.

The grass laid flat in the humidity as Kathryn Pryde walked, the short heels of her shoes occasionally sinking into the soft earth. She came to a stop at two modest stone landmarks. Each was carved of black marble, hewn with machine precision and set deep into the earth. Between them, Dr. Hank McCoy had installed a small gas torch had been planted into the ground where a flame burned continuously, even in rain. As an added touch, Hank had arranged for the flame to occasionally change colors from a soft orange to a charming blue. Kathryn stood for a moment and regarded each of the stones on their own merit.

"Hello, Professor," she said to one after a long while.

"Hello, Mr. Lehnsherr," she greeted the other.

For a moment, Kathryn did not know what to say, much the way she often never knew what to say for the first few minutes when she visited their markers. Despite herself, despite her resolution not to at least this once, she choked back a sob. Grimacing, she reached into the inside pocket of her blazer and retrieved a handkerchief.

"God damn it," she sighed, almost laughing as she pressed the folded silk to the corners of her eyes, "Every time I promise myself I won't do this. I'm going to ruin my makeup."

Feeling the swell of emotion pass, she replaced the handkerchief in her jacket and took a long, deep breath.

"I miss you both so much. I wish more than anything you could have been here today."

Looking down at herself, she smoothed a crease in her skirt, straightened her jacket, and spread her arms slightly at her sides, presenting herself to the two men's markers.

"Introducing Congresswoman Kathryn Pryde," she said, managing to hold a straight face only for a moment before letting a girlish laugh bubble out of her. With many other women in her situation, pushing forty, hair tied into a severe bun behind her head, wearing a padded blazer and skirt and heels, such an act would have seemed unbecoming and even strange. Not the case with Kathryn Pryde, who had always retained a charming girlish quality, even after she had managed to shed her valley girl accent.

"I know," she said, putting a hand up to cover her grin, "I still can't believe it either."

In the emotion of the moment, she felt her sadness return with a vengeance, and her grin became crooked, then strained, then finally broke into a frown as Kathryn choked back another sob, this one stronger than the last, and it had brought friends.

"I just..." she said, tears coming unbidden and streaking down her face, smearing her makeup just as she had feared when she tried to wipe them with her hands, forgetting her handkerchief, "I wanted you to see this so much. We're doing it, you guys. Just like you said we could."

Mr. Lehnsherr had passed nearly two years ago, the Professor followed several months after, both well into their nineties when they had gone. Like all great friends and lifetime confidants, one could seemingly not sustain long without the counterweight of the other. They had even died in the same upstairs master bedroom, with the best view of the grounds. Kitty remembered with vivid detail how much it had broken her heart, and at the same time filled her with unimaginable joy that the two men, who for so long had forsaken the bonds of their friendship, had both come to shed their mortality under the roof that they both had a hand in building, in one way or another.

She had been there when Mr. Lehnsherr had gone. Xavier, crooked with age and learning heavily into his chair, but with eyes still bright and wise and clear, had stayed with him nearly every day as his health had deteriorated, holding the other man's equally bony and paper-like hand whenever he was awake.

She had come to visit with Kurt, her own hand curled in the tri-dactyl fingers of her blue-furred husband as they sat and talked with the Professor, and Mr. Lehnsherr when he woke. Every now and then, she would squeeze Kurt's hand three times in succession. To them, such a gesture was code.

_Squeeze. Squeeze. Squeeze._

_I. Love. You._

He returned her grip with his own.

_Squeeze. Squeeze. Squeeze. Squeeze._

_I. Love. You. Too._

She had looked and seen tears streaming down Kurt's face, turning the indigo of his fur-covered face a deep navy.

"Charles," Mr. Lehnsherr said, his words frail and airy.

"Magnus," Xavier replied, holding the dying man's hand in his.

"I fought for my dream," he gasped, "But... But I preferred yours. Always."

He closed his eyes and slept for the final time. He had died later that night.

Kathryn kneeled down and touched each stone in turn, moving her palm across the smooth surface, her fingertips following the engraved names on each.

"I love you," she said to each, "I know you'd be proud. Of all of us."

She heard soft footfalls behind her and turned to meet the visitor.

Logan chewed on an unlit cigar as he came to a stop next to her beside the stones. No matter how long she had known him, his mutant ability to retard his aging had never ceased to amaze her. And as she grew older, it had even inspired a small bit of jealousy. Probably over one-hundred years old by anyone's guess, he remained lean and strong and seemingly immune to the touch of time. Besides the gradual greying of the blue-black whiskers on his face and the hair on the sides of his head, he looked much the same as he had the day she had met him. Well, perhaps with a few new wrinkles here and there.

"Kitty," he said, her name serving as both greeting and acknowledgement.

Kathryn rolled her eyes and smiled, "Not even Kurt calls me that anymore, Logan."

Logan raised an eyebrow, "Oh yeah, I forgot. It's Congresswoman Kitty now, right?"

Kitty laughed, despite herself, and drew the stout, muscular man into a hug, breathing in the scents of sweat and denim and machine oil that seemed to follow him everywhere he went.

"How ya been, kid?" he asked, returning the embrace, patting her lightly on the shoulder.

She stepped back and straightened her coat, "Oh, same old same old. Saving the world one day at a time."

"Bet it doesn't have the same spark of adventure as it did when you were here," Logan said smiling, jerking a thumb to point at the mansion.

"Yeah, well," Kathryn replied, "I don't fit into those spandex suits anymore. And now I get to go to bed at night without worrying about saving your ass in the morning."

Logan stared at her for a moment, then roared with laughter, dropping his cigar from between his teeth. He bend over to pick it up from the grass, dusting it off as he fought off the last chuckle.

"There's always new recruits that'll take that job on," he said with a wry grin.

Kathryn smiled and turned back to the markers. Logan did the same. A long moment of comfortable silence passed between them as they contemplated the stones in their own way.

"I miss them," Kathryn repeated her sentiment from earlier, but now it felt better to share them with somebody.

Logan nodded, "We all do."

Looking up, Logan took a long breath in through his nostrils and regarded the sky.

"Best get inside," he said, "It's gonna rain."

As though on cue, a heavy droplet of moisture hit Kathryn square in the head. She dabbed it with her hand and frowned.

"Storm can't just call it off?"

Logan extended an arm to her, and Kathryn took it. They began to walk back to the mansion, now growing paler in color as the bright light of the afternoon gave way to the softness of the clouds and the evening.

"She doesn't like to conjure and control the storms like she used to," he explained, "Somethin' about the balance of nature and abuse of power."

Logan raised an eyebrow to her, "I think she's just gettin' old and cranky. Heavy sits the Headmistress' crown"

"We're all getting old, Logan." Kathryn laughed and brushed at the grey streaks in his hair, "Even you."

"Yeah," Logan admitted, chewing on his cigar to the point that it would soon be unsmokable, "But I make it look damn good."

The walked the rest of the way in silence. Just before they came to the massive wooden door, Kathryn stopped and looked back at the small, glowing fire resting between the distant markers of the two men.

"What's up?" Logan asked.

"It's just..." Kathryn looked back at Logan and smiled, "I'm glad we're still here to get old at all."

"Me too, Kitty," Logan said, "Which reminds me, when are you and that fuzzy husband of yours gonna bring around some kids for us to meet? You're not gettin' any younger."

Kathryn elbowed him playfully in the ribs, "None of your business, gramps."

* * *

><p><em><strong>Manhattan, New York. 2046.<strong>_

"Logan."

"Kitty, I'm here. Don't try to talk."

Kathryn started to laugh, but pain stopped her. She coughed, winced, and blood bubbled from between her lips.

"For the last time," she said, forcing a grin through red-stained teeth, "No one calls me that anymore."

"Can you phase it out?"

Kathryn looked down at the three inches of twisted, black, metal shrapnel that had lodged into her ribs, just below her left breast. Every beat of her heart forced a small trickle of blood from the ruined armor and flesh. She looked at Logan and frowned, tears forming in the corners of her eyes. She shook her head.

"It's in the lung," she said, beginning to calm now, her breath coming in slow gasps as shock started to take hold, "I'd just bleed out faster."

There was a rattle of gun fire and Logan planted himself between the noise and Kathryn's twisted, bloody form. He grunted as a stray bullet entered his shoulder and bounced right back out again, rattling his adamantium ribcage. He tried to get a bearing on their surroundings, but a thick wash of acrid smoke and tear gas blocked both his sight and smell. Somewhere nearby there was a small explosion, and small chunks of dirt and pavement rained down on them, Logan using his body to shield Kathryn's wound from the debris.

Logan pressed the communicator at his throat and barked, "This is Logan. I'm at twenty-third and Lexington, I have a man down. I need a healer!"

He took his finger off of the communicator and looked around frantically.

"Healer!" he shouted into the fog of battle, "_Healer!_"

It was no good. His team had been scattered in the ambush, losing each other in the gunfire and explosions and smoke. Somewhere, he heard the long whine of Cannonball as he streaked through the sky at nearly the speed of sound. There was a crash and a distant explosion, and Logan wondered if Sam had hit his mark.

He felt a hand touch his cheek and his looked down. Kathryn stroked his stubble and smiled sadly, on the verge of unconsciousness.

"No," she said softly, "I don't need another life on my conscience."

"But, Kitty-" he started.

"Shh..." she said, closing her eyes, "Just do me one last favor, Logan."

Logan grabbed her gloved hand in his own, "Anything, kid."

Her voice came in nearly a whisper, "I want to see my husband."

Logan's ears pricked as he heard the tell-tale whistle of a rocket-propelled grenade. Leaping to his feet, he turned and popped his claws. Seeing the oncoming glow of the tiny missile, he leapt forward into a roll came up underneath the grenade, raking it with his claws as it passed overhead, faster than any normal man could have tracked. The round exploded around his extended arm, ripping armor and flesh from the limb and turning muscle into ribbons of red gore. If Logan noticed, he neglected to show it on his face. Already the ruined flesh began to coil and snake over the exposed metal skeleton of his hand and forearm, connecting and healing and repairing itself.

"Let's go, kid," Logan grunted as he lifted the woman to his chest with the ease of carrying a child, even with one arm a bloody ruin. He could still hear her heart beating, and he locked his ears onto that sound. Nothing else mattered.

Last he had seen Kurt, he had been evacuating kids from the Xavier School Manhattan building, three blocks to the west. He broke at a flat run, holding his teammate, his partner, his friend, close to his body to protect her from any further hurt.

The dust, white and thick, stung his eyes and throat as his legs pumped beneath him. He weaved and jumped through the ruined street, passing shattered storefronts, burning cars, and disabled military vehicles. Bodies, burned and bloody and dismembered, littered the ground in front of him. Some mutant, some not, and some wearing the armament of the X-Men. He tried his best to ignore it all as he hear Kathryn's heartbeat grow weaker and slower with every passing second.

Out of the smoke, he suddenly found himself upon a group of three soldiers, each as blinded and crippled by the dust and debris as the last. They were firing their weapons sporadically in all directions, fending off some attacker that Logan could not see.

Too late, one turned to spot Logan. His helmet and balaclava covered most of his face, but Logan could see his eyes, wide and frantic and afraid as he charged at them.

The soldier began to raise his weapon to train it on Logan, began to shout something to his comrades, but too late. Hoisting Kathryn into one arm in a smooth motion, Logan popped the claws on his free hand and raked it through all three of their bodies in one stroke, tearing open stomachs and spines, slicing through weapons and armor, severing limbs. He did not even turn to see them fall.

"Hang on, kid," he growled, "Just hang on."

He came to the building, or, at least, the spot where the building had been, and skidded to a halt, not believing what he saw. It had been leveled to the ground, nothing more now than a pile of twisted steel and brick and smoke and fire. Logan looked down at his feet and saw the bronze marker that had once sat proudly for all to see above the building's main doorway.

_Xavier's School for the Gifted, Manhattan Campus, Est 2038._

Logan had been there for the opening ceremony of the building. It seemed so long ago now, another world away when Ororo, still strong and proud in her age, had stood before the gathered crowd and addressed them, leaning slightly on a wooden cane as she spoke.

"It gives me great pleasure," she had said, "To open the first of our Institute's expansions here in the heart of Manhattan, one of the greatest cities the world has ever known. It is our hope, in an age of such beautiful progress in human and mutant relations, that many more such schools will open across the nation and, in time, across the world, so that mutants everywhere may learn to utilize their unique and powerful gifts towards the betterment of mankind."

"No..." Logan snarled as he looked upon the ruin.

_Bamf!_

Logan's head jerked in the direction of the sound. A sound that he had come to know so well over the years.

"Kurt!" he shouted, "Kurt where are you?"

_Bamf!_

The noise again as Kurt teleported somewhere nearby, closer than the first. The dust was impossible to see through, and though Logan's eyes stung and watered, he made no effort to clear the debris from them. He could still feel Kitty's heart, and that was all that mattered.

"Kathryn!"

Logan turned to the source of the voice and could make out a shadow in the distance through the haze.

"Kurt!" he called.

_Bamf!_

In a curl of black smoke and a flash of light, he was there. He was covered in the same white dust and ash that coated Logan at Kathryn, but the blue indigo fur and red sash across his black body armor made him more visible than they. Down one arm and across his face, blood had congealed and mixed with dirt and dust to create a thick crimson crust. Standing face to face with him, Logan noticed for the first time that Kurt had cut his hair down the the scalp, more suitable for combat than the long style he usually wore. It made him look years older, or perhaps that was just how he looked now, and Logan had not really seen.

"Kathryn," Kurt choked as he beheld his wife's ravaged body, "Oh, _Mein Katzchen._"

Kathryn opened her eyes and looked at Logan, smiling weakly, "Okay... So maybe he still calls me Kitty."

Without another word, Kurt reached for them, placing one hand on Logan's shoulder and one on Kathryn.

_Bamf!_

Logan nearly fell backwards. It had been a long time since Kurt had teleported him, and the experience was just a jarring and disorienting as he remembered. He looked around and breathed somewhat-fresh air for the first time in hours. They were on a nearby rooftop. From this vantage he could hear the rattle of gunfire and the booming of energy blasts as they echoed through the concrete canyons in all directions.

He lowered Kathryn's body to the gravel that covered the building's roof. In an instant, Kurt was at her side, holding her hand in his, making a point not to stare at the chunk of metal protruding from his wife's chest with his glowing eyes.

"Oh, _Katzchen_," he said, choking on the words even as he tried to smile, "Vhat have you done to yourself?"

"Oh, you know," she replied, forcing a smile, tears streaking through the smudges of dirt and blood on her face, "Just an old broad saving the world."

Kurt tried to laugh, but it left his throat as a sob, and tears began to fall from his inhuman eyes.

"A healer!" Kurt snapped his head up and looked at Logan through his tears, "Vhere are ze healers? Vhy did you bring her _here_, Logan?"

Kathryn reach up and cupped his cheek in her hand, bidding him to look at her.

"It's okay," she said, "I wanted him to bring me to you... So I could say..."

"_Nein!_" Kurt shook his head furiously, pressing her ever-whiter hand to his face, "_Nein, nein, nein!_"

"...Goodbye," Kathryn finished, "And I wanted to tell you I'm sorry... I wanted to be the mother... of your children, my love... I wanted to grow old with you, elf. I guess... that wasn't in the cards after all."

"Zhat vasn't your fault!" Kurt hissed, "It vas them! You've done nothing! You vere the best thing that ever happened to me!"

"Please," he cried, "Please don't go!"

There was a long moment and Kurt bent over the body of his wife, sobbing with all the abandon of a child. He pressed his face to hers, touching every feature with his delicate tri-dactyl fingers, as though trying to memorize them. Which, Logan realized, he might be.

"Promise me something," Kathryn said, nearly all of the strength now gone from her voice.

"Anything, _mein liebe._"

"No," Kathryn pointed at Logan, "You. Promise me something."

"Name it, kid," Logan whispered, leaning in closely next to Kurt.

Kathryn reached up and grabbed the collar of Logan's armor, pulling him down with surprising vigor so that her mouth, hot and red with blood, was beside his ear.

"They took... everything from us," she hissed. Logan cold hear the effort weakening her heart down to it's last beats. He chewed on his lip as fury began to build in his stomach. She was going to die here, on a rooftop, in the middle of a battlefield. This woman he had watched grow up from a child. This was not right.

"Make them... pay," she finished, and released him, lowering her head back down to the gravel.

Logan was stunned. In all the years that he had known Kathryn Pryde, never once had she uttered words of vengeance. But then again, no one had stolen the fertility of her entire species and murdered her friends and attacked her on the streets like a stray animal before.

"Promise me..." she said, gasping for the air to form the words, "On... your life."

Without thinking about it, Logan popped the claws of his right hand and raised them in from of his eyes, a gesture of solemnity that seemed appropriate, if unplanned.

"I swear it," he said, "I'll make them all pay, Kitty."

Kitty Pryde nodded and turned back to Kurt, and for just an instant, Logan could see them as they were so many years ago; Two teenagers in love again, youth and hope and promise on their side.

He saw Kathryn close her hand on Kurt's and squeeze three separate times in succession. Kurt let out a cry and closed both hands around hers, new tears falling onto his wife's body.

"I love you too," he sobbed.

Logan heard Kathryn Pryde's heart slow...

And fade...

And stop.


	2. Way of the Warrior

_Generally speaking, the way of the warrior is a resolute acceptance of death._

_ -Miyamoto Musashi_

_**Kyoto, Japan, 2055  
><strong>_

Logan picked up the steaming bowl of tea and held it cupped in two hands over his kneeling thighs. With his eyes closed, he took a long moment to inhale the vapor curling up from the deep green foamy liquid, contemplating the aromas found within. He placed the bowl to his lips and tilted the liquid down his throat, the heat burning his mouth and tongue pleasantly. Drinking it quickly this way eliminated the need to be careful about getting the grey whiskers of his beard and mustache wet. He savored the austere simplicity of the flavor in the _matcha_ and replaced the bowl onto the tatami mat.

With measured, precise movements, Logan picked up the long-stemmed bamboo ladle from it's balanced position on the lip of boiling-hot kettle and dipped it into the scalding water inside. He poured the hot water into his emptied tea bowl, replaced the ladle, and picked up the small bowl again, slowly tilting it this way and that, letting the water pick up the small particles that remained from the powdered tea mixture. Satisfied, he poured the water, now tinged a light green, into the _kensui, _with the rest of the waste water that came from a tea ceremony_._

Logan took a long, steady breath, and bowed, lowering his head down towards the floor and placing his rough, gnarled hands on either side of his knees. There were more steps to the ceremony, but he often found trouble seeing them through after the actual drinking of the tea, and in truth he found no real fault in that. After all, as much as Japan had been his adoptive home at many different points of his life, he was still a western man, still a Canadian by birth, and if he felt like his tea ceremony was done when he actually drank the damn tea, well, that was alright with him. Yuriko might chide him for it later on, but his mind was on other things now.

He stood, straightening his black silk kimono as a westerner might straighten his suit jacket, and turned. The area where he performed his tea ceremony was in the far corner of a large, subterranean dojo, the floors covered in tatami mats, the ceilings low, the only light permitted coming from large oil lamps and the smoldering embers of incense. In the middle of the room, situated in a perfect row, each similarly garbed in black kimono and kneeling erect on the floor, were his six students. Their eyes were closed as they meditated, all except for Rin, who's milky, blind eyes tended to flutter open unconsciously.

Logan crossed the room and stood before them, making no sound at all despite his sandaled feet and the nightingale floors that he had had installed beneath the mats. Even the slightest pressure underfoot in the wrong area would cause the entire length of the underlying boards to emit a high-pitched chirp of polished wood rubbing against polished wood. One of the first tasks any of his students had to master when they first began their training here was to successfully navigate the room without disrupting the disclosing boards. Logan looked at Ciara, grim in her meditation, and grinned, remembering how the tall Italian girl had struggled with that task, unaccustomed as she was to ever treading lightly on command, if she tread lightly at all.

"Vascha," Logan snapped, calling out to the girl on the far end of the line. Like the others, she was garbed in black kimono, but with an unnatural matte neutrality to the color, much the way every inch of he body was so complected. As always, he had to struggle slightly to maintain a visual fix on her, even as she simply kneeled on the floor, as his eyes were redirected by her body's absorption of the ambient light around her.

Vascha did not reply, but that was part of the small test he had just given her. The students had been trained to never cease their meditation without an explicit command from Logan, and simply calling her name was not enough to fool her. She remained stoic and kneeling, her hands cupped slightly on her thighs in a meditative configuration above the appropriate chakra. Nevertheless, Logan could tell she was uncomfortable. She had never liked meditation, and he could hear her heart quicken when he called her name. She was still far too self-aware.

"I told you to meditate," Logan said, "Not sit on your knees and think about how bored you are."

For a split second, Vascha's black on black eyebrows furrowed, and Logan smiled. She might never be good at self-reflection and calming of the mind, but then again, neither was he. As instruction went, a fault in the student was inherently a fault in the teacher.

He looked at each of them in turn down the row. Vascha, black as tar and then blacker still, a Russian-born emigrant who no longer called any country home. Rin, with her flickering blind eyes that only served to fool others into thinking her a helpless Japanese youth. Ciara, who managed to hide the all the charm and good-nature of a grizzly bear in her attractive teenage frame. Hunter, an aerokinetic and, as a blood relative of Storm and Spyke, one of the last remaining generational X-Men. Gansükh, a lean and grim Mongolian boy with an eye for sniping and a facade of stoic impartiality that hid a genuine and warm persona beneath. And finally, Benjamin, the quiet boy from Israel who's entire story he had only shared with Logan.

Logan inhaled deeply through his nose and barked, "Up!"

With almost no delay, the six were on their feet at rested attention. Gansükh took a quick moment to sway his head from side to side, producing a small pop as the tendons loosened after the long period of inactivity. Ciara responded in kind, flexing the fingers in her deceptively powerful hands, making a symphony of crackles.

Logan regarded them for a long moment with a guarded measure of pride. He would not have dreamed even two decades ago that such a team would ever have been assembled. Would ever _need_ to exist in the first place. Before him were six of the best-trained soldiers, warriors, and tacticians he had ever produced, a step beyond even the best X-Men he had trained over the years. Decades of drilling and training and suffering and fighting could be accumulated between them, the mutant war driving each of them from their rightful places in family and society. Each of them had taken more lives, fought more battles, and endured more pain than any person their age had the right or cause to in other circumstances.

War had made them, Logan always told himself, he had merely refined them. The thought of war caused him to reflect on the long years that had brought them all to this point.

After the outright fighting had begun all those years ago, the purpose and cause of the X-Men had shifted drastically. Where once they were a peacekeeping and humanitarian group, they had been forced to become a small and private band of soldiers, defending mutants wherever they could find them, doing the best the could to curb the outright slaughter that had blossomed from humanity's final and most desperate attack on mutant kind. The Terminus Virus.

No one knew or could even venture a guess where it had come from. It was not even fully understood when it had been introduced into the mutant population. To many, it simply seemed to appear out of no where into their lives. A brutally efficient airborne virus, it attacked the reproductive organs of any mutant or X-gene carrier it came into contact with, rendering an entire facet of the human race completely sterile. A mutant child had not been born in almost a decade, but the vast majority of mutants had been infected long before that. Logan's thoughts turned to Kathryn Pryde and her husband Kurt Wagner, the heartbreak in their eyes when an aged Dr. McCoy had explained Kathryn's seeming infertility to them.

Tragically, Terminus was not even discovered until, by all accounts, the mutant cause had been a success. Almost worldwide, the combined efforts of Charles Xavier and Magnus Lehnsherr had finally begun to take hold, tolerance and understanding taking root where fear and suspicion had once ruled. Mutants could attend school, hold jobs, run for political office, or opt to do none of those things at all. Finally, such things had been their own choice, and no one else's. For a time, Hank had even become head of the biology department at John's Hopkins University. It was there that he had begun to collect census data on the mutant population publicly for the first time, and it was there that Hank had begun to suspect that all was not right with the world's mutant citizens

"It's curious," Hank had said, looking down his aging blue nose through glasses (that were thicker than Logan remembered the last time he had visited) at a stack of paper, each containing various sets of data from mutant around the world, "But it would seem as though the mutant birth rate has began to slow dramatically across almost the entire world. Some areas have not seen a pregnant female mutant in nearly a year."

Logan shrugged, "There were a couple years there when making babies wouldn't have seemed like the kindest idea for a mutant, Hank. S'probably just contingency data."

"It's more than that," Hank intoned, looking up at him from his wooden desk, which had intentionally been built oversized to accommodate the ape-like mutant's gigantic form, "This is a trend even in areas where the mutant-human tension was never even an issue."

Logan hadn't even been aware that such areas existed on the planet. He raised an eyebrow, "So what's the deal?"

"I don't know," Hank answered, delving back into his data, "I don't know."

Even Hank could not have guessed the magnitude of the situation. When he finally did, it was all but too late. Every mutant on the planet had been infected, and while some seemed to fight it better than others, the virus was strong, cunning, and savage. And it had won. Even in Logan, who's healing factor had deflected nearly every disease and poison and wound and bacteria known to man, had been susceptible. He was as sterile as any other mutant now. The blow had been even harder to endure when Hank discovered that, on top of all the brutality of the Terminus Virus, it was not natural; It had been _manufactured_ and introduced to mutantkind intentionally.

Hank had tried his best to keep that information a secret, but nearly half a dozen of his lab technicians and assistants were mutants, and soon the terrible truth of Terminus was a _public_ terrible truth. Logan remembered Kathryn's congressional address, where she begged and pleaded, with tears running down her face, to the mutant community, imploring them not to lash out, not to seek retribution for the terrible fate that had been forced upon them so cruelly. She spoke with such passion and vigor that Logan had believed, honestly and truly, that things might be alright after all.

It had been all of two days after her speech that the first mutant attack on humans occurred. No one could be sure who had been responsible. No one had ever claimed credit for the assault, but when the Eiffel Tower in Paris had fallen, and not only fallen, but pushed onto it's side by an invisible force, killing nearly three hundred foreign tourists and French, there was no question as to the motive and message. The war had begun in full, whether mutants and humans liked it or not. Some had even suspected, laughably, that the long-dead Magneto had somehow faked his own demise and returned with a righteous fury. But Logan himself had smelled the death on Lehnsherr's coffin. It was not him, nor his ghost.

The response by the human governments of the world had, at first, been refreshingly restrained. Mutants with a history of criminal activity were detained and questioned, and who could blame them for that? Next the X-Men and all of the current and former students were called to inquiry, and in the interest of preserving human-mutant relations, they had agreed. But then, more human deaths in Moscow, in Tokyo, in Dubai, in New York City. And with each incident, the nations of the world had tightened their grip on the mutant population and squeezed.

The Mutant Registration Act was dusted off and brought back to the table. And it had passed.

A law requiring all mutants to wear power-inhibiting experimental devices was drafted. And it had passed.

And finally, the long-dormant Sentinel program was brought forward to be reactivated. And it was.

Mutants had been a danger before, even Logan could admit that, when individuals and sometimes small groups had lashed out at the world around them out of anger and fear, when Magneto's Brotherhood and then his Acolytes tried to exact the man's will by force. But now? Now mutants as a whole had been threatened the world over, and the danger was so much more palpable. With every day, with every new insult to their human rights, and with every mutant mother that could never conceive a child, came a fury that could not be contained. For every mutant that was detained, two more would take to the streets the next day, using their powers however they could to wreak havoc on a world that no longer cared for them.

Logan remembered Lance Alvers, his once lean and boyish face now rugged and scarred and bearded, fifty feet high on a hijacked video screen in Times Square, his voice bellowing down on the crowd of shocked and frightened humans.

"Until the creator of the Terminus Virus comes forward and claims responsibility for his crimes against mutantkind," he scowled, "Humans will die every single day. We _will_ know the truth, or we will take as many of you insects down with us as we can!"

Shortly after his message, there no longer was a Times Square. Buried under an avalanche of pavement, concrete, steel, and broken flesh.

But no one did come forward, and no truth was to be had. And the death had continued.

For a time, the X-Men had worked with the American military, operating much as they had before, using their own strengths to subdue others, to suppress the violence, to keep both sides from tearing each other apart. But then the reports came back that Wolfsbane and Iceman and Berzerker and Cyclops had each been detained while on an assistance mission in South Africa. Ororo had raged over the phone for hours with their military contacts, demanding an explanation, and getting stonewalled. Logan could still remember the hundreds of lightening strikes that enunciated her fury that day. Then others went on missions and never came back. And still Storm's rage went unheeded.

Until the Battle of Manhattan. Logan suppressed a grimace as the memory of that day came back to him.

Of all things, he remembered the body armor distinctively. For a long time, the X-Men had worn little more than reinforced jumpsuits, designed to instill a non-threatening but authoritative presence in the minds of the public. They had been simple almost to the point of laughability, looking like little more than pajamas on some of the students. Even as the outfits evolved over time, becoming sleeker and harsher, they had always maintained that common thread. But no longer. Shadowcat, Nightcrawler, Cannonball, Colossus, Sunspot, and others, new recruits, telepaths and healers and energy-casters and ferals, each wore their newly-fabricated armor. Military by design, gone were the skin-tight getups that they had once paraded themselves in. Thick carbon fiber weaves, ceramic and kevlar plating, bio-metric readouts, all painted with black urban camouflage. The days of sending messages to a fearful public were over. These suits were designed to take abuse, and a lot of it. They were designed to keep the wearer alive. They were designed to intimidate. Even on Kathryn's middle-aged body, she cut a severe and powerful figure, nano-fibers in her suit mimicking the strength and speed she had possessed as a young woman. The X-Men now dressed for war.

It had not been enough.

They had gathered outside of the Manhattan building. A transmission had been intercepted; The American government had decided that they had had their fill of domestic mutant terrorism, and if that meant rounding them all up one at a time, that was fine. Sentinels, what few now remained after so many had been destroyed by mutants all over the world, streaked across the sky, their thrusters aglow even in the bright light of day. Down Madison Avenue, tanks and soldiers progressed south at a steady, terrible rate, headed towards the Xavier School.

"We gotta split up," Logan had said to the mutants around him as they stood in the large doorway of the building, "My team will run diversion. There's no way we can strong-arm 'em toe-to-toe. Nightcrawler, your team runs evac."

Nightcrawler, Kurt Wagner, the blue elf, one of the oldest and most talented teleporters in the word, led a small elite team of 'porters he had trained specially himself. They were going to be working overtime to get all of the mutants who had sought out Xavier's School as a refuge out of the city.

"Ja," Kurt said, shifting uncomfortably in his new armor, to which he had still taken the time to affix his now-trademark red sash, "Ve'll get zem out."

He could never have known how badly it would all go. Logan tried to remember if Kurt and Kathryn had even taken the time to say goodbye before his team had departed from the building, or if their only meaningful moment of that day really had been those last seconds, filled with blood and tears and horror. He could never, would never, be sure.

Logan sighed, then fixed his attention back to his students. War had made them, he told himself again, he had just refined them.

"Even though," Logan said quietly, his voice almost lost in the open space of the dojo, "We're a dying species, what should stop us from trying to survive?"

The teenagers were too well-trained to exchange glances or raise incredulous eyebrows, but he could detect their shift in attitude at his unusual turn of phrase. He was not usually one to be poetic or decorate his speech.

"Sensei?" Vascha ventured, bracing herself slightly for a reprimand for speaking out of turn.

In most cases, a reprimand is exactly what she would have received. Today though, Logan simply frowned and looked at her for a long moment. Each student began to shift uncomfortably. Hunter cleared his throat, and instantly looked as though he regretted doing it.

"You've all made me proud to be called that," Logan said, switching to Japanese. He had taught them bits and pieces of every language that he knew, but Japanese had been one of their main focuses, if for no other reason than Kyoto was their base of operations, and because oftentimes his gruff English sounded to harsh and informal in the dojo. "You have all accomplished more than I could have hoped for. Whatever the world may call us, terrorists, killers or fanatics, you've all helped save lives. I wish things were different. I wish you could all go home, have families, have children, but that's not the reality we live in anymore.

"You've heard me talk about Professor Xavier," he continued, "About the kind of man he was. I can't lie to you, he would not be proud of the state of the world. He wouldn't agree with what I've taught you. But surviving today is not the same thing as surviving then. And even though mutants are a dying species, we still have the right to life. You are the protectors of that right."

A long silence passed. He could tell that the students were uncomfortable. In all of the years he had known them, he had rarely said more than two sentences at a time to them, and almost never had he waxed philosophical the way he had just done. Logan waved a hand in the air dismissively.

"Forgive me," he said, "I must finally be getting old. You're dismissed."

The six knelt and bowed deeply, as was customary, and he returned the gesture. They turned to file out of the dojo, exchanging no words or glances, maintaining the silence that had been drilled into them.

Benjamin, the last in the line, turned back to look at Logan before closing the sliding rice paper door.

"Sensei?"

"Yes, Benjamin?"

"Is..." the young man looked uncomfortable, rubbing the back of his neck. Though all of Logan's students were inherently quiet, Benjamin was the least likely to pose Logan with a direct question, and it made him uneasy to do so, "Is everything alright?"

"Yes," Logan lied, "Everything is alright."

* * *

><p>"You've made a mess, Logan."<p>

Logan turned as Yuriko entered the room, pushing her kimono beneath her knees as she lowered herself to the floor beside him. She looked him up and down, then looked at the small piles of silver and black hair that covered the floor around him.

"You haven't cut your hair in a long time," she said, her tone not betraying any feelings she might have on the matter.

Logan shrugged, looking at the lone claw on his right hand that he'd been using to hack at the locks, "It's like riding a bicycle, darlin'."

Yuriko smiled slightly and took Logan's clawed hand in hers, guiding him with a deftness and skill that should have been surprising in a woman her age, but not to Logan.

Cutting off the topknot had been simple enough, but once his long, thick hair had tumbled down to his shoulders, Logan had begun to simply hack at it hit his claws, trying to remember how he had done it before.

Yuriko took finger-fulls of his hair and grasped his hand, using the razor sharp blade to slice through as though it wasn't there. She worked quickly, sometimes pulling on Logan's arm unnaturally, tweaking the shoulder joint, but he did not complain. For a moment he felt the urge to warn her against the sharpness of the claws, but thought better of it. Yuriko was as familiar with adamantium as he was.

"You're leaving," she said as she trimmed.

"Yes," Logan replied. There was no sense in denying it.

"You believe he can be trusted?"

Logan knew that Yuriko read his limited correspondence with his contacts around the world. It was part of their bargain that allowed he and his students to live in her family's ancestral home. Still, this was the first time she had ever asked him about anything she read directly.

"As much as I trust anyone."

"Do you trust me?" she asked.

Logan turned to look at her. She was old now, nearly eighty, he face showing wrinkles etched out of a life of combat and trial, her hair now thin and white in the tight bun she wore, but her eyes, dark and deep and brutally honest, were still the eyes of the girl he had once loved. He reached out and stroked her cheek lightly with his rough hand.

"Always," he said.

Yuriko nodded and closed her eyes, leaning her head into his hand, and at the same time shrugging it away as kindly as she could.

"Then listen to me when I tell you not to go."

Logan grunted. He had known his departure would not be without its snares.

"I don't have a choice on this one," he said, "If the intel is right, this could be the one shot we have."

"To do what?" she asked, her mild tone still not giving way to the tempest of emotions that he could practically smell on her, "You cannot bring any of them back, Logan. All you can do now is save lives, protect the weak from the strong, undo what small damages can be undone. You can do all of those things without wasting your life on a final _banzai._ Vengeance will not make life easier for any of us."

"Vengeance is all I have left," he said, "I made a promise a long time ago. I made a promise that I would make the people responsible for all of this pay."

"You've made many promises, Logan."

"Yuriko..."

She did not reply, and for a few minutes, Logan believed that she might have dropped the topic altogether. Finally, she finished cutting his mane of hair, and moved his claw up to his face, grasping his hand lightly in her palm. With only half a dozen precise movements, she trimmed the long beard and mustache that Logan had allowed to grow back into the thick sideburns that were once a staple of his appearance. Logan sheathed the claw she had used and felt his face. Smooth as any barber's shave.

Logan looked into the small, round mirror on the wall, regarding his newly shorn and shaved visage. He could not hide some of the surprise he felt. Time, it seemed, had finally begun to get the better of him. His hair now cut to the wolfish style that he had worn much of his life only seemed to make a mockery of his aging appearance, forcing him to compare himself now with the face that had stared back at him in the mirror many years ago. His beard had obscured deep crevices that had formed into the leathery skin of his cheeks and around his mouth. Hard lines formed in a spiderweb pattern around his eyes, making his face appear as hard and unyielding as battered granite when his squinted. Somewhere along the line, his eyebrows had turned almost completely grey, and only now seeing them without his equally greying beard made him really take notice.

"If your contact is right, you'll be going to your death," Yuriko said, her voice cracking every so slightly, though her aged face remained stoic and passive.

Logan stood, dusting silvery black hairs off of his body. He allowed his loosened kimono to slide from his shoulders and pool around his feet like a black puddle. He crossed the room and opened a wooden chest. Like a rush of memories, the scents from the old clothes nearly knocked him back. The residual smells of people and places and events were still powerful even after all of this time. Logan pulled several pieces of black body armor from the chest and began to dress.

"We're all going to our death," he said, not turning to look at her as he fastened the belt of his pants, "I'm going after the man responsible."

"Your students will never forgive you."

"They'll be fine."

"_I'll _never forgive you."

Logan stopped and turned to face her. Tears were welling in the corners of her eyes. She drew a silk handkerchief from within the folds of her obi and dabbed at them. He went to her and raised her up by her shoulders, the feeling of her frail body beneath his hands making him strangely sad.

"I promised your father that I'd take you as my wife," he said, "And take his place as the head of your clan. But that was another time. We can't have that anymore."

Yuriko's father, Kenji, had been the genius that had mastered the metal adamantium that had been bonded to Logan's skeleton. He had even been the man that had proposed the process that would make the bonding possible. A lifetime ago, Logan had come to Japan seeking vengeance on the him, only to find a frail old man, head of a weakening Yakuza family, that had begged his forgiveness, offering his own life as penance for Logan's suffering. In that time, Logan and Yuriko, a young woman then, a fierce warrior, had fallen in love. After Kenji's death, Logan had left, promising to one day take his place when he returned, taking on the mantle of Kenji's empire, newly invigorated at Logan's hands. But, again, that had been a lifetime ago, and the world was a different place now.

Yuriko sighed, fighting away the tears, brushing them off of her cheeks almost indignantly.

"I know," she finally said, "I know, my love. I've known for a long time. My family dies with me. It would seem karma is not through exacting it's payment for what he did to you."

"The students," Logan said, trying to avoid that painful topic, "Keep them safe."

She nodded, "They are like the children I never had. You know they will always have a home here."

She laughed suddenly and added, "But you know they will never stop. They will follow the way you have taught them until the day they die. You are their sensei."

Logan smiled morosely, "That's why I have to go. I have to try and stop this while there's still a chance for them to live a life without violence and death."

"Is such a life even possible for them anymore?" she asked rhetorically, looking into his eyes in that penetrating way of hers.

Logan kissed her once lightly on her cheek, her dry, papery skin a bitter memory of the youth that had left her too soon for both of them. He pulled her in to embrace her, his arms nearly swallowing her thin figure up. She grasped at his bare back with her fingers, both of them knowing that it was very likely the last time they would ever touch one another.

"I don't know," he said.

When the students awoke the next morning at dawn, Logan was nowhere to be found. They would never see their master, their teacher, their sensei, again.


	3. Sinister

_**Two years later. Somewhere in New Mexico.**_

He was born Nathaniel Essex in 1854, in London, England. But that name, that time, that place, no longer held any special significance to him, and had not for the better part of a century. What he had become, what he was, and what he did transcended those trivial details, and they held his attention about as much as an average human's rudimentary relationship to the amoeba that they had evolved from many thousands of millennia ago. It was an academic and vaguely amusing fact, and nothing more.

No, what interested him far more at the moment was the Ark. He took a long, contemplative breath, as though trying to inhale the majesty of it all. Nearly a century of planning was about to ripen like a fruit and fall into his open palm, and all he need do was wait for the slightest wind to knock it from its branch.

Of course, he would not be who he was if he were one to wait for such a breeze by happenstance. Much better to create your own.

The Ark was an engineering marvel; A vast, powerful airship nearly two miles one end to the other, the culmination of almost two decades of laborious planning on his part. Almost perfectly self-sustaining, it could support tens of thousands of human lives without breaking a sweat. Powered by massive nuclear reactors and solar energy, and so large it could accommodate it's own miniature ecosystem, it was jokingly referred to by the engineers that built it as Earth Junior. Able to function on land, at sea, in the air, and even in the vacuum of space on a limited basis, it was, by all accounts, one of the most perfect vessels ever designed.

And soon it would be his.

He regarded it's sophisticated design with pride. It looked like some beautiful technological deep-sea creature, it's sublime curves and color evoking a sleek and massive Man O'War jellyfish. The umbilici and utility bridges and cranes surrounding it as it underwent the last stages of it's completion were not entirely unlike some great chrysalis from which it would be birthed. In the waning sunlight, the fog and smoke of machinery as workers scurried to finish it's final preparations made the entire design seem to glow orange and purple with an interior radiance. Already he could see the thousands of portholes and landing lights begin to light up and twinkle like stars on it's surface.

"Beautiful," he said, allowing a smile to play across his lips.

"Sir?"

He turned to face the source of the interruption. In the middle of his spacious and minimal office, a meek and small young scientist he had come to know as Dr. Conklin stood, nervously glancing this way and that, eyeing the other occupants of the room with a measure of fear. It was not entirely unwarranted. Very few humans these days ever had to face the prospect of being in the same room as one mutant, let alone five. In the far corner of the darkened office, a low, baritone growl could be heard.

"Hairbag," Essex chided, "Manners, please."

Essex stood and walked around his massive black slab of a desk, placing a friendly hand on Dr. Conklin's shoulder as he approached him. He noted with some satisfaction that the small man seemed to shrink even further at his touch.

"What can I do for you, Doctor?" he asked.

Dr. Conklin cleared his throat and produced a personal tablet computer from his lab coat pocket, thumbing a button that brought it to life and queuing up a screen of data from which he read, his thin face and glasses awash in the blue light the small screen emanated.

"I was sent to inform you," he said, fighting a crack in his voice, "That the first batch of the Genome Shock Troops are completed and awaiting your final approval."

Essex's face lit up. This was a rare and special day indeed.

"I shall make my way to the laboratory immediately," he said, placing both hands on Dr. Conklin's shoulders now, his ghostly white fingers giving him a small squeeze which made the man almost yelp in pain and surprise. Despite himself, Dr. Conklin forced a smile.

"No need for that, sir," the doctor said, now gaining some measure of confidence as Essex's mood became increasingly more genial at the news, "We had one squad brought directly here. They're outside of your office as we speak.

"Good man!" Essex chuckled and patted the man on the head like a dog. If Conklin took offense to that, he made absolutely sure not to show it on his face. Essex turned to his desk and pressed a comm button.

"Send them in," he said to his secretary through the desk's microphone.

At once, the massive marble doors of the office parted and slid into their housings within the walls as silent as a whisper, despite their considerable weight. The sound of a dozen feet marching lightly in unison echoed through the chamber as the troops entered. The doors slid back and closed. Essex could barely contain his enthusiasm.

"Beautiful," he said for the second time that day.

They were more perfect than he would have allowed himself to believe. Twelve in all, they were clad head to toe in the latest, most cutting-edge military hardware that man had yet produced. Exo-skeletal armor covered every inch of them, gleaming black even in the dull light of the dark office. More than simple uniforms, these suits augmented, refined, and perfected every function of the already impressive beings housed within. Their faces resembled something less like a human and more like a ferocious and unsympathetic insect, clad as they were in helmet and visor and breathing apparatus that regulated and controlled their air intake, filtering out any impurity in the atmosphere and allowing their breathing to be controlled for optimal performance in any given situation. Their visors provided real-time combat intelligence, and allowed perfect viewing conditions and optional filters for every spectrum of light.

Essex knew all of this, because he had designed them.

He approached one, pushing Conklin aside lightly. He looked the soldier up and down with satisfaction, grasping it's head in his hands and moving it from one side to the other, then up and down, inspecting every facet of the helmet's construction. The soldier offered no resistance at all, allowing it's head to be moved without protest.

"They've passed all primary and secondary combat-effectiveness measures?" Essex asked Dr. Conklin without turning to look at him.

"Of course," Conklin said, looking back down at his personal tablet, "With one-hundred percent capability."

Deep from the shadows of his office came an audible snort of derision.

Essex snapped his head around and glared at the source of the interruption.

"Yes, Laura?" he asked with a mock pleasantness.

She walked, or rather sauntered, from her place in the shadows with a sneer on her face.

"All the laboratory testing in the world won't tell you dick about what a soldier can really do," she said, looking at the troops like a predator marking prey, "Even a tinker toy that you built yourself."

"You would know, wouldn't ya?" another voice called out from the shadows, this one thick and oily and snide with a hint of an Australian accent. Laura looked in the direction of the mild insult that had been paid to her and spat.

"Fuck you, George," she snapped.

Essex groaned and rubbed one temple with a white finger.

"Children," he said, "Behave yourselves."

Laura ignored the comment and walked up to the trooper closest to her, eyeing it up and down much the way Essex had just done. She leaned forward and sniffed it, her lip curling in distaste.

"They smell like a womb," she said.

Dr. Conklin looked at Essex searchingly, unsure of what to make of Laura's comment, or the scorn that seemed to come along with it.

"Mutants are odd individuals, Doctor," Essex shrugged mildly, "And prone to unusual prejudices."

"These, on the other hand," he turned back to face his troops, "These are true perfection."

"Yes, sir," Conklin said.

"When can we arrange their first live-fire testing?"

Conklin consulted his tablet, "Groups Alpha and Bravo are being outfitted as we speak. Charlie group here is scheduled after. The rest are being corked and tested in about twelve hours, pending your approval."

Essex nodded, "Tremendous work, Doctor. Truly. You are dismissed."

Dr. Conklin bowed his head slightly, replaced his tablet back into the pocket of his lab coat, and brought a small communicator attached to his wrist up to his mouth.

"Charlie group," he said, addressing the twelve troops before him with an authoritative tone that seemed forced in such a small man, "Return to barracks."

The troops did not move. Essex grinned broadly. Perfect.

A line formed in Conklin's forehead as he furrowed his brow in consternation. "Charlie group," he said again, this time slightly louder, "Return to barracks."

Again, the troops remained where they stood at rested attention, making no signal that any of them had even heard the doctor out loud, let alone through the communicators in their helmets.

"That won't be necessary," Essex said, waving a hand through the air dismissively, "This group can remain here."

"But-" Conklin began.

"Tell me," Essex interrupted, "What is our schedule for completion of the Ark?"

The doctor faltered a moment, taken off-guard by the sudden change in topic. Once again he produced the tablet from his pocket and brought it to life, flipping through pages of data with swipes of his finger until he found the pertinent information.

"The majority of work is already done," he said, reading from the device, "Testing of the primary and secondary systems will start momentarily. After that, all that's left is minor inspection detail. I was about to inform General Cole at SHIELD."

Essex nodded, turning and walked back behind his desk, turning away from the doctor and gazing out his window once again, the Ark massive and awe-inspiring in the distance.

"I think," he said, "That it would make a fine exercise to combine the maiden flight of the Ark with the first live-fire exercise of the Genome Shock Troops. Don't you agree, Doctor?"

"Sir?" Conklin's apprehension from the beginning of their meeting began to surface again, the doctor shifting uncomfortably where he stood, "What exactly do you mean?"

"Yes," Essex said, as though he had not heard the man, "I think that would be the perfect way to start."

_I create my own breeze,_ he thought to himself, _and the fruit falls into my hand._

There was a loud and sickening crunch as one of the troops stepped forward and drove it's fist into Conklin's back. With almost no effort at all behind the blow, several of the man's vertebrae shattered under the impact. Conklin's legs gave out beneath him as the nerve connections and spinal cord were severed and crushed. The man managed only the faintest gasp as he fell, his face contorting and twitching in pain. His tablet fell and skittered across the floor.

Essex turned and looked at the crumpled form of the human writhing on the marble floor like a hooked fish. His legs splayed out uselessly as he tried to move, crawling away from the trooper that had struck him with shaking, grasping hands already slick with sweat.

"I'm sorry," Essex said, feigning concern "Was there something else you needed, Doctor?"

Thin streams of spittle began to flow from the doctor's lips as he struggled across the floor, tears forming in his pained eyes and streaming down his cheeks, forming a grotesque puddle of moisture around his head. Despite his injury, he was still attempting to crawl across the floor, trying to grasp the tablet that had fallen out of his reach.

"Oh," Essex said in amusement, "He needs his little gadget to sound an alarm. Ramrod, would you help him, please?"

From the shadows, a tall, thin man with a mess of curly black hair walked casually to where Conklin wriggled on the floor. From his long jacket, he produced a wooden pole. Standing over the tablet, he raised the stick out in front of his body. Without warning, the wood seemed to spring to life, extending in the man's grip and shooting down with the speed of a bullet, puncturing the small computer with a hiss of crunching glass and a faint crackle of sparks. Ramrod smiled and kicked the broken device towards the struggling man.

"All yours, doc," he said in a jovial Irish accent.

From the corners of the room, the remaining two mutants that served Essex began to emerge. Hairbag, a feral mutant covered in dark, coarse fur scrambled across the marbled floor on clawed hands and feet. He sniffed the doctor as he passed, snapping his jaws and barking at him like a hyena. Conklin cried out in fear and shielded his head from what he surely thought must be an attack. Hairbag smirked and sat by Essex's desk on his haunches, his low growl returning as he did.

Gorgeous George slithered from the other corner, his oily, purple and black body not walking so much as sliding and oozing across the room like a gob of wet paint flowing down a canvas. With a smile, he extended a hand and watched as the viscous material of the limb flowed under Conklin and wrapped around his midsection, lifting him up to Essex's eye level. The man shrieked in pain as the oily coils tightened around his destroyed torso. Urine dripped from his useless legs and spattered onto the floor.

"My good Doctor," Essex said, still smiling as though nothing at all unusual had occurred, "It is with great regret that I inform you that your services are no longer required. I thank you for your years of hard work and bid you a very fond-"

There was a hiss of metal scraping bone as Laura's adamantium blades slid from the housings in her forearm. It was not the metallic _snikt_ that had once come from the mutant known as Wolverine's claws, as the bones in her forearm were, in fact, not bonded with that same remarkable metal. It was a much more brutal and harsh noise as the claws tore through the bones that impeded their progress out of her hand, her healing factor making this but a momentary annoyance.

With barely a glance in the doctor's direction, she swung her arm and decapitated him. She looked as though nothing could have been more dull and uninteresting in the world as the man's head bounced off of the marble floor with a wet thud.

"...Farewell," Essex finished.

Gorgeous George released the limp body from his snake-like grip, allowing it to crumple unceremoniously to the floor. Ramrod gave the mutant a perturbed look at blood splashed and hit his shoes in a shower of red droplets.

"Watch it, boyo," he warned George, leaning down to wipe the polished leather with a clean part of Conklin's white lab coat. George grinned at him with swirling, inky features.

Essex turned to face the twelve genome troopers that still stood stoically in the middle of the office.

"I want every worker in the facility dead within the hour," he snapped.

In perfect unison, the soldiers about-faced and marched out of the room. There was a shriek as one turned and tackled Essex's secretary like a panther as they exited the sliding marble doors. The noise of her screams were muffled instantly as the doors slid shut again with a click.

Essex faced the four mutants in his employ and smiled.

"It begins," he said.

George and Ramrod smiled back. Laura sighed and crossed her arms expectantly. Hairbag made a noise that sounded like a cat hacking up a hairball as he bounced on his hind legs in excitement.

"Go and activate the remaining genome troopers," he told them, "Kill everything in your path."

George, Ramrod and Hairbag filed out of the office, Hairbag batting Conklin's severed head like a volleyball as he passed it, snickering as it bounced across the room. Only Laura remained.

"Essex," she began.

"No," he replied, putting a hand up, "I have no more use for that name now."

Laura rolled her eyes. "Fine," she said, "_Sinister,_ I just want to remind you of our deal."

It was Sinister's turn to roll his eyes, "Child, do I strike you as a man that forgets?"

"When it serves your purpose," she said mildly. Of the four mutant that held their allegiance to him, she was the only one that would ever speak to him so callously. Sinister rather liked that about her. He chuckled and placed a hand on her shoulder.

"You need only wait a bit longer, girl," he said, "All is falling into place."

She shrugged his hand off of her as though she were removing some vile creature that had decided to perch there.

He laughed and turned, and once again took in the sight of the Ark. He felt himself swell with pride just looking at it. He could only imagine how it would feel to be at her helm.

"You know it's only a matter of time before they come for you," she warned, "His so-called _disciples._ You know they won't be in the dark much longer after this."

Sinister grinned and looked back at her, his red eyes aglow with possibility. Somewhere in the facility, they could already hear shouts and muffled gunfire.

"Child," he said, "I'm counting on it."

Nathaniel Essex was born in London, England nearly two centuries ago. Mister Sinister had been born today.


	4. A Girl, A Boy, and a Bar

**_Bangkok, Thailand_**

Benjamin Levine thought briefly about going to Vascha's side, defending her honor, as it were, giving the lanky, dark-skinned Thai man that harassed her a piece of his mind. Then he remembered exactly who and what Vascha Aleksandrov was, and the notion disappeared in a puff of logic.

"Oreo gonna kick his ass," a voice behind him said. He turned on his stool and looked at the man that had spoken, who wiped down the filthy surface of the bar with an equally filthy rag. The bartender looked at Ben, then looked over his shoulder where Vascha played billiards, and smiled, the cigarette pinched in his teeth never moving as he clenched it between the molars and puffed at it with every breath. He was the type for whom smoking had become equivalent to breathing, and Ben would not have been surprised if he had found a way to smoke even while he slept.

"Yeah," Ben replied, turning back to watch the scene play out, "I was just thinking the same thing."

It was rare that any man was brave enough to approach Vascha, let alone try and get overly-friendly with her, but not so rare that the outcome wasn't familiar to Ben. Her obvious mutation was often enough to deter them, the unusual black matte color of her body and clothes scaring many men off, despite her attractive, athletic figure. Ben suppressed a grin as he watched this poor brave soul, a middle aged Thai man with the salty and brusque personality of a fisherman 'accidentally' rub himself up against Vascha's backside as she attempted to line up a shot. The light-absorbing ability of her skin notwithstanding, it was hard to read Vascha's expression to determine how she felt about the man's little 'maneuver.' She simply glanced at him for a moment, then proceeded to sink her targeted ball into the far corner pocket.

The Thai man groaned at her good-naturedly, several of his friends making all manner of noise, some laughing, others cursing Vascha's prowess. It was rather easy to see who had placed money on which player.

"You killin' me, baby," the man smiled, speaking broken English through tobacco-yellowed teeth. Ben got the distinctive impression that he wasn't just referring to their game of pool, his suspicions confirmed when the man comically rubbed his groin in Vascha's direction when her back was turned to him.

"Someone should really tell him just how many of the wrong trees he's barking up," Ben said aloud to no one in particular.

Vascha played pool to hustle some spending cash every now and then. Not a fortune, but enough to afford them the opportunity to spend a night drinking every now and then or buy a nice dinner without worrying about burning through what precious little money they had. Of course, Madame Yuriko would send them whatever they needed whenever they needed it, but it was often too hazardous to make contact with her, especially if they planned on staying in one place for awhile, and none of them would ever risk putting the wizened and elderly Japanese woman in harm's way.

They had to come to seedy, hole-in-the-wall bars like this one for Vascha to be able to play at all. There was not as much outright fear of mutants in Bangkok as in other southeast Asian cities; The fighting in Thailand had never escalated beyond what their standard police and military forces could handle. There were probably only several thousand mutants left in the entire world, not counting those locked up in stasis (which was as good as dead anyway), and Vascha was viewed as more of a novelty than a real threat. But there was suspicion nonetheless. While the girl could walk the streets during the day without fear of arrest or harassment like some other countries, getting someone to play pool with her in a reputable establishment was another matter entirely.

They had come to know the bartender and owner of this particular basement bar, a thin, wiry man who looked as though his musculature was made of dried meat wrapped in thin leather, rather well, though they made a point never to visit often enough to become too familiar to the regular patrons. He was Japanese by birth, Thai by nationality, and still had ties and allegiance to a Yakuza clan that was friendly to Yuriko, so they could be reasonably sure that their whereabouts would not be betrayed by him or their identities sold to any number of legal and illegal organizations that hunted for them. At the very least, he had never hinted that they were at all unwelcome in his small, remarkably hot and humid basement bar. Most of his regulars were laborers, fishermen, and other blue collar types that were often surprisingly nonjudgemental, so long as you were friendly a bought a round every now and then on the hottest and most humid days.

"Tetsuo," Ben addressed the barman, pushing an empty beer mug towards him and wiping a layer of sweat off of his brow, "_Betsu no bīru wa, shite kudasai_."

"_Hai_," Tetsuo nodded curtly, grabbing the mug and holding it under the tap, refilling it and returning it to Ben. Ben sipped at the beer and grimaced. It was as piss-warm as the one before it, but at least he could be reasonably sure that what the tap said on the handle was what was actually being served to him. Some bars they had been to would refill their taps nightly with whatever had been left in mugs throughout the day, whether it was actually beer or not. He knocked back a long gulp and fought the urge to shake his head like a dog as the warm liquid hit his stomach.

"Five hundred baht say Oreo waits to beat him at the game before she beat him for real," Tetsuo said mildly. He did not usually condone violence in his bar, but when it was Vascha, it usually ended as soon as it began, and oftentimes most were smart enough not to take up the cause of a man she had just trounced.

Ben raised a finger to his lips. "Shut up," he hissed, "You know she hates when you call her that."

Tetsuo just smiled, crushing the filter of his new cigarette in his teeth before lighting it. He called Vascha 'Oreo' because of the confusion they had had with each other when the three had first met. He had assumed that her unnatural black skin meant she was African, and it took at least thirty minutes of careful explanation from the mutant girl to make him understand that, while her skin, hair and eyes were black (along with every other part of her body), she was in fact Russian by birth, and as Caucasian as they came. Tetsuo found the conundrum so humorous that he had given her the namesake of the black and white cookie, much to Vascha's chagrin.

He reflected, not for the first time, on what Vascha must have looked like before her body had turned the hue of fresh asphalt. White skin? Blue eyes? Blonde hair? The very notion seemed ridiculous.

Ben turned his attention back to the game. In her usual style, Vascha had begun the match by simply equaling her opponent ball for ball, missing just as often as he did, and keeping it close enough that the Thai man could grow in confidence and, hopefully, add to his initial wager with her before half the balls had been sunk. It looked to be going according to plan; Solids and stripes were about equal on the aging billiards table, scattered across it's green, pocked surface at random. Before he knew it, the fisherman would have the trap sprung upon him, and the game would be over. Vascha need only decide when and how she wanted to embarrass him at the game and take his money.

At least, that's how it was supposed to go when Vascha's opponent didn't feel like sexually harassing her.

Ben watched as, for the second time, the man walked up behind her as she lined up a shot, only this time he place one hand on her lower back and thrust his pelvis forcibly into her, making her ignoring him impossible. His drinking friends laughed and clapped at his audacity and bravery, no doubt fostered along by alcohol. Vascha dropped her pool cue in surprise, and slowly turned to face the bawdy fisherman, though she remained bent over, her legs slightly parted. Ben felt sorry for the Thai man. If he didn't know better, he'd say Vashca was putting on more of a show than usual, provoking him with a feigned sexuality that would only get him into trouble. She was far too self aware to not realize the effect bending over the pool table that way would have on the semi-drunk fool.

_I mean, seriously,_ he thought to himself, _Does she _have_ to stick her ass out like that?_

Vascha straightened and faced the Thai man, standing at least six inches taller than him, putting one hand on a braced hip. She said something to him in his native tongue that Ben didn't quite catch; He had not picked up on Thai as quickly as she had. The man smiled lecherously and gestured at Vascha with all the subtlety of a kick in the head as he replied. Again, Ben was too far away and his comprehension of the language too labored to understand the words, but whatever he'd said incited a round of laughter from his friends. Vascha shook her head, and Ben knew a warning had been offered. The fisherman would not get a second.

She bent down to pick her pool cue up off the floor and leaned over the table again, eyeing the balls in play, but not really picking a shot anymore. She sensed what was coming as easily as Ben could see it. Her warning went unheeded, and the Thai man once gain moved to grind himself into her buttocks.

"Here we go," Ben said, sipping his warm beer with a frown.

Before the fisherman could complete his unwelcome sexual advance, Vascha slammed her pool cue down onto the edge of the table, the torque it created snapping off one end and sending the splintered piece spinning out of her hands, end-over-end backwards over her bent form, and directly into the man's face. It struck him hard and flat on the brow, but only had enough force behind it to cause him to falter backwards, yelping with surprise and pain at the sharp blow to his face. Vascha used his lapse of awareness to turn and spring on him, grabbing him around one wrist, twisting around and under his arm as smooth as liquid, and coming up behind him, locking his arm brutally against his back. With her other hand, she reached under his other arm and put two fingers into his mouth, open in a shout of pain, hooking them into the flesh of his cheek and pulling. Before he could react to either holds, she slipped a foot between his legs, wrapped it in front of one ankle joint, and used that point as a fulcrum as she pushed forward on his upper body. Her combination of holds and locks made it impossible for him to resist as she slammed his torso and one side of his face painfully into the billiards table, sending the balls flying in all directions. She freed one hand and, quick as a snake, struck him in a nerve cluster on the neck, his body going limp, knocking him out cold instantly.

The fisherman's friends were nearly frozen in place, mixtures of shock and fear and disbelief mingling on each of their faces. Vascha lifted their companion, limp and unconscious, up off the table, took what little money the man had in his pocket, and pushed him towards them. They scrambled to catch their friend before he collapsed to the floor, and proceeded to make their way out of the bar, struggling up the stairs and back onto the streets of Bangkok, all the while slapping the limp man on the face and saying his name, trying to get him to wake. The sudden light of the late day made Ben squint as the door at the top of the stairs swung open and closed.

Altogether, the entire sequence had taken as much time as it took for Ben to swallow his mouthful of beer. In truth, when Vascha moved as fast as she had just done, her skin's absorption of the ambient light around her made it damn near impossible to track her movements accurately. Ben only knew what had just happened because it was almost exactly what he would have done. They had, after all, both been trained by the same man.

"Glad you didn't take the bet," Tetsuo mused through teeth that clenched yet another cigarette.

Vascha dragged a barstool to where Ben sat and perched herself on it, grabbing Tetsuo's pack of cigarettes from behind the bar and taking two, putting one in the corner of her mouth and tucking one behind her ear. She lit the one pursed in her lips and took a long drag, the glow of the cherry lasting only a moment before the light seemed to snuff out as the color of the cigarette was sapped out, turning the same matte black as everything she touched. After several puffs, Vascha tipped the ashes into a glass dish, which instantly changed from flat black to a normal smoky grey.

She looked up from her smoking at Ben and Tetsuo, who had been staring at her since she sat down.

"What?" she asked.

Tetsuo immediately turned away, busying himself with various tasks and being unusually attentive to the patrons at the far end of the bar. Ben put his attention back on his warm beer, tipping another gulp down his throat. The warm fingers of inebriation were starting to snake through his intestines, and he decided this would be his last beer. Being drunk when the sun was up was hell.

"You did a number on that guy," he said mildly, looking down into his drink.

Vascha shrugged. "I warned him to cut the shit. You saw me."

"You did sort of stick your ass right in his face."

Vascha said nothing and took a long drag from her cigarette, exhaling pale smoke from her nose.

"Well?" Ben pressed.

Again, Vascha didn't reply. In fact, she looked as thought she hadn't heard him at all. Ben leaned in closer, ignoring the harsh aroma of burning tobacco that curled around her.

"What the hell is wr-"

"Shut up," she hissed in a low whisper, "And check your six."

For a fraction of a second, Ben felt his body tense. He fought the urge to simply turn and look behind him. He took a moment to account for his surroundings, searching for reflective surfaces, mirrors, anything that could allow him a view of the room behind him.

"The television," Vascha offered quietly.

Ben stole a glance at the dark and fogged screen of the ancient TV that sat forgotten on a wall mount. A long crack obscured part of it's surface, and the appliance had never been on even once any of the times they had visited the bar, so he made sure not to stare at it long. Watching a broken television would be nearly as obvious and just as disastrous as Ben simply about-facing and scanning the room.

"White guy in the suit, against the far wall," Ben whispered, silently cursing himself for not noticing him earlier. Whoever he was, he was painfully obvious now that Vascha had pointed him out. Not that Caucasian men were particularly unusual in Bangkok, but the pristine press of his suit, the careful part in his hair, and the understated but still expensive watch he wore, it was all wrong for this bar and this part of the city.

"Yeah," Vascha said, "He's been watching you for the better part of an hour. Even when I-"

"Even when you turned your pool cue into a stripper pole and then rearranged that guys nervous system?"

"Exactly."

"Why me? Anyone looking for us would notice you first," Ben did not shy from the fact that Vascha was the only member of the team with a painfully obvious mutation.

Vascha thought about that for a moment. "Recon?" she asked rhetorically, "I'm probably the only one with an accurate description on my rap sheet. He's probably trying to determine if you're someone of real interest, or just some random hookup of mine."

Ben felt his face redden slightly. Even if he didn't think of Vascha as a sister, she made no attempt to hide her homosexuality, and even the thought of 'hooking up' with her made him more uncomfortable than he would have guessed.

"So what do we do?" he asked, finding his voice again.

"Get loud and buy me a drink," she said.

Ben couldn't help himself. He turned his head and stared at her.

"We've been sitting here talking quietly too long," she explained, "He'll realize we're on to him in about twenty seconds."

She returned his look and pulled her fresh cigarette from behind her ear. Suddenly, she grabbed him by the collar of his olive drab military coat and pulled him in close. Ben's eyes widened as his felt a tongue slide up his neck, slick and warm, leading up to his earlobe.

Ben was vaguely aware of a whooping sound and Tetsuo shouting, "Oreo gone crazy today!"

He felt hot lips graze his ear and tickle the small hairs like the fluttering of tiny wings. Just before she broke the intentionally pornographic exchange, he heard her whisper: "Get loud and buy me a drink, Ben. Now."

Once again, Ben had to remind himself of exactly who and what Vascha was.

"Tetsuo!" he shouted, reaching into his pocket and slamming down a fistful of baht, "Tequila!"


	5. The Proposal

_**Greetings again, readers. It occurs to me that I never gave proper credit at the beginning of this story to the creators of the OCs that appear. Here is the list.**_

_**Thank you to,**_

_**-All Knowing 1, creator of Benjamin 'Aretz' Levine**_

_**-smileyface1627, creator of Rin 'Echo' Fujisaki**_

_**-BitchAmI, creator of Ciara 'Espen' Monetti**_

_**-HokkaidoMaster, creator of Hunter 'Zephyr' Burden**_

_**-Dracarot, creator of Tömöbatar 'Ambush' Gansükh**_

_**Movin' on!**_

"Explain to me your plan again," Ben whispered as he kicked back yet another shot. His stomach roiled in protest as the liquor hit it like a small bomb. His fingers felt like useless, senseless chunks of flesh on his hands, and his legs could not seem to stop him from swaying slightly. He wouldn't be able to keep this up much longer.

"We act like immature drunken idiots and don't leave the bar until he calls off his strike team."

"How do you know there's a strike team?"

Vascha stared at him, one black eyebrow slowly raising, as she knocked back a shot of her own.

"Ben, anybody who even suspects who we might be... Do you think they'd just settle up in a bar with us with no backup and see what happens?" she asked after chasing her shot with a swing from a bottle of dark beer.

Ben considered this. It did make sense. Despite having laid low for the better part of a year now, their little group had been, when led by Logan anyway, on the top of just about every major government's most wanted list for several years running. It had cooled off considerably when the American government had collapsed under it's own dead weight, but Ben could list off nearly a dozen groups of people that would burn through considerable resources to see the disciples of Logan dead or captured. If this man was watching them, and Ben was thoroughly convinced now that he was, there would be a very well-equipped group of dangerous men not far off, waiting for a signal to fall upon them like a plague. In keeping with Vascha's plan, all they needed to do was take so long and become such an unappealing target that the team would be forced to break from their location and try to take them elsewhere. Possibly at the hostel that Vascha and Ben stayed at. If they knew where they drank, they certainly knew where they lived.

Vascha banged loudly on the bar and pointed at the empty shot glasses. Tetsuo laughed an poured the golden-colored liquid into the small vessels, puffing away on the smoldering end of a cigarette, nearly down the filter. Ben blanched and looked at Vascha pleadingly.

"I don't know how you're not puking," he said, "But I really can't drink anymore, Vasch'."

Vascha let out a raucous laugh and draped an arm around Ben, planting a wet kiss on his cheek.

"What?" Ben asked, not comprehending.

"You just told me how pretty you think I am," Vascha whispered, her voice now stone sober and serious, "Keep looking like you're having fun."

Vascha lifted her shot glass, winked at him, and poured it down her throat, screwing up her face as the harsh taste of the liquor washed around in her mouth. Again, she chased with the a swig of beer.

"_How_ are you _doing_ that?" Ben marveled at her continued ability to remain seemingly unaffected by the heavy drinking.

Vascha grinned wryly at him and gestured towards her hand with a jerk of her head. She leaned across the bar and tipped the bottle over. But, instead of beer spilling out, the golden-colored liquor they had been drinking sputtered out of the mouth and onto the dirt floor behind the bar.

"I'm not finishing the shot," she whispered into his ear, though her body language and wicked grin probably made it looked like she was confiding in him something much more personal and perverse, "Just spit it into the beer bottle when you pretend to chase it. Don't you remember that trick?"

Ben shook his head slightly, trying to clear the forming cobwebs of inebriation. If anyone ever did teach him that, it had been lost on him. It didn't sound like something Logan would have taught them. Madam Yuriko, perhaps?

Vascha gave him a pitying look and grabbed his shot glass off the bar, kicking it back and surreptitiously spitting it into her beer bottle as she had been doing all night. She stole a glance behind her and grabbed Ben by the arm.

"Dance with me, dah-ling," she smiled, exaggerating her mild Russian accent so that it was thick and boisterous.

Before he knew what was happening, she hand placed his arm around her waist and pulled him to the empty patch of floor in the middle of the bar, now much thicker with patrons in the waning light of day. She wrapped both arms around his neck and shoulders and began leading him in the rhythm. It was a Thai song that Ben didn't know, but it was slow and sultry and smacked of an imitation of American pop music from years gone by.

The movement felt good to Ben, as he had just spent the past hour trying to stop himself from swaying, and letting his body tilt and shift to the slow beat was a relief. He was not remarkably drunk, he knew that by the clarity of his own thinking, but drinking so much so quickly had done a number on his body. He let his head rest lightly on Vascha's strong shoulder as they moved.

"I hate you for this," he whispered only half-joking, suppressing a vile-tasting burp that threatened to empty the contents of his stomach before he muscled it back down.

"Oh hush, you'll be fine," Vascha replied with a chuckle.

A long moment passed, only the slow beat of the music and their rhythmic steps giving any indication that time was passing at all. The noise of the bar mingled with the music like some strange orchestra; Clinking glasses, the mumble of ambient conversation, laughs, shouts, a mug being spilled somewhere. Ben knew that Vascha could find a home anywhere, that she had long ago abandoned any hope she may have once harbored for a normal life, but this place, this situation, this danger they found themselves in night and day without end, was still alien to him. Not for the first time, he thought of his family in Israel, what fates may have befallen them, and what little he could do to stop it. Not for the first time, he wanted to go home.

Vascha jerked her shoulder slightly, bumping his head and bringing him back to the present moment.

"I think we're on," she said, her voice barely carrying beyond his ear.

She guided their movement to the music, slowly turning until Ben could see the white man that watched them out of the corner of his peripheral vision. The man, looking tired and frustrated, was collecting his briefcase and coat, giving them exhaustive looks that he barely managed to hide.

"Now?" Ben asked, the gravity of the situation returning and forcing sobriety upon him with a cold, lead brick that plopped down into his guts.

"Wait for it..." Vascha said, "When he checks in, we go."

"What's the plan?"

Vascha pulled back from him to look him in the eyes, a grin forming on her black lips and teeth. Again, she kissed him on the cheek and gave him a gentle pat where she had left a moist spot on his face. Ben wasn't sure what to make of that.

"Black sand," she said simply.

Ben faltered for a moment, then returned her smile. He could practically feel his eyes lighting up at the idea.

"For the first time tonight, you and I are on the same page," he said.

Vascha's eye flickered, and though she had no visible pupils, Ben could tell she had seen something out of the corner of her eye.

"Look," she said.

Ben tilted his head slightly. At the edge of his vision, he just barely glanced the man in the suit speaking into his understated wristwatch as he began to make he way to the stairs, moving through the sparse crowd in the bar with care, so as not to draw attention to himself.

"I saw it," Ben said.

In an instant, Vascha seemed to make some strange transformation. Her hands dropped from around his neck, and where once had stood a drunk and flirtatious young mutant girl, there was now a soldier, sober and cold and callous. It was subtle, but Ben could see it, even if no one else could. He straightened his own shoulders, shaking his head from side to side, making the joints pop and crackle. Years of training came back to him like a flood as the prospect of combat entered his mind.

"Let's do it," he said, rubbing his hands together and, with a mental power that even he did not fully understand, reached out to the surrounding environment with his mutant senses. His psyche began to sniff out and make connections with the earth around them. The dirt and stone and clay that made up and surrounded the basement establishment called out to him and submitted to his will. Ben was probably one of the few trained fighters that actually found some measure of comfort fighting underground.

Vascha winked an eye the color of black glass. And then the world went dark.

It was more than darkness. For a moment, it seemed as though light had simply ceased to exist, so total was the pitch black of the room. Ben heard the patrons shout and scream in surprise, some griping some imagined fault in the building's power grid, but a select few seeming to comprehend the unusual nature of the dark, their voices dropping to fearful whispers.

Ben moved across the room as smooth as a cat, dodging tables and chairs and people as he went, using his control of the dirt beneath the shoddy floorboards to help him map their locations by the small depression of weight on the floor. He made an inventory of the footfalls as he went, feeling shoe sizes and style and the unique gaits of their owners.

_No, no, no, no,_ he thought, cataloguing the bodies as he passed them, _Not him, not him, not-_

There. Amongst the footfalls he found the one he was looking for. Smooth rubber soles, slightly heavier than those around him, moving with a panicked haste, stumbling as he searched for the stairs. Ben would have to be fast. In a moment, the man would realize the blackout was more than coincidence, and make another call on his communicator.

"Vascha!" Ben signaled, raising up his hands, feeling the dirt and clay beneath him melt like liquid and rise up in columns.

Suddenly, the light returned, and there he was. Standing like a deer the headlights, the suited white man blinked in confusion, comprehension slowly dawning in his eyes as he saw Ben mere feet away, ochre-colored tendrils of liquid earth swirling around his body, bent to his will.

"Oh shi-" he began, reaching for something inside his jacket. Too late.

Ben shot his hands forward, and the earth followed, hitting the man with the force of a truck, covering him, encasing him in dirt that hardened on impact, taking on the properties of a hellish concrete, smothering the man's limbs and pinning him to the back wall. The man began to shout, and Ben sent a final gob of clay at him, fastening his mouth shut like a thick, dark glue, whipping his head back from the impact.

The bar patrons began to panic at the sight of the man encased in hardening mud, screaming and pushing for the door in horror. When they found the stairs, they halted abruptly. Vascha stood there, two long, wicked blades brandished in her hands, blocking their path. Unlike nearly everything else Vascha touched, her knives retained their metallic shimmer in her grasp. The light danced off of them, promising lethal retribution to any that dared challenge her.

Vascha shouted at the crowd in Thai, silencing them instantly with her booming authoritative tone. Whatever she had said to them, it seemed to calm the horde, but still they sat at the foot of the stairs, seemingly lost and confused by her words.

"Tetsuo," Vascha turned her attention to the barman, who seemed more annoyed at the whole situation than frightened, "Take these people out the back entrance."

She turned her attention to the man encased in earth, his exposed eyes wide with fear.

"We need to have a private word with our friend here," she growled.

* * *

><p>"Now, Ben's going to take that dirt out of your mouth. If the next thing that comes from your lips is anything other than the words, 'Thank you for not gutting me,' well... I think you know what will happen."<p>

The man in the suit nodded fervently. Ben had drawn most of the earth off of him and back into the floor, allowing Vascha to push him down into a chair, one of her blades pressed up against his throat.

Tetsuo, perturbed as he had been by the unpleasant scene Ben and Vascha had made in his bar, made good on his loyalty and had led the patrons out of the bar, locking the pitted and dented steel door behind him.

"Ten minutes," he said sourly before he left, "I gotta win some customers back tonight."

Ben raised a hand and, as though possessed with a mind of it's own, the mud in the man's mouth liquified and pulled away from his face with a thick sucking noise. The man coughed and gagged, though he was noticeably careful not to put any pressure on the blade at his neck.

"Thank you," he wheezed, "Very sincerely, for not gutting me."

Vascha looked at Ben and smiled, "I didn't expect him to actually say that."

She picked up a pack of abandoned cigarettes and a lighter from a nearby table. She shook out a cigarette, placed it in her lips and lit it. She dragged the table closer to the man in the suit and pulled up her own chair, sitting on it backwards and leaning over the chair back. She puffed on the cigarette and eyed the man up and down. Ben found his own chair and sat next to her, glaring with his own fiery intensity.

"Name," Vascha said.

"Special Agent Andrew Travis, with SHIELD," the man responded with an earnestness that suggested he was far out of his depth.

"SHIELD died when the United States did," Ben snorted.

The man, Agent Travis, allowed himself a small and sheepish smile. "It takes more than that to undo SHIELD."

Vascha sheathed her knife and placed the cigarette in her mouth again. She reached forward into Travis' inside jacket pocket and produced a small black plastic box, two metal prongs protruding from one end. She threw it onto the table. She resumed her search and found a small leather wallet. She looked inside and then tossed it to Ben. He flipped it open. Inside was Agent Travis' SHIELD credentials, if that's what they really were. They certainly looked legitimate. And new. Finally, Vascha took from Travis' coat a small computer of black glass, sleek and reflective and put it on the table.

Vascha jerked a thumb at the pronged plastic box. "That's all they sent you in here with to protect yourself? You thought you were gonna take us out with your toy there?"

Ben picked up the box and inspected it for himself. It was little more than an elaborate taser.

Travis raised his hands and shook his head, eyes wide. "No, no! That's not why I'm here at all! I was sent to make contact with you."

"Right," Ben said, "That's why you were sitting here watching us for the better part of an hour."

"I..." Travis rubbed the back of his neck, his face reddening slightly, Ben couldn't believe how young he was now that he was looking him in the face, "I was going to introduce myself, but I only had an accurate description of Ms. Aleksandrov. I thought you two were on a date. I didn't want to upset her."

"Well, you've fucked that up," Vascha said, stealing a glance at Ben and raising her eyebrows in an_ I told you so _way.

"So there's no strike team?" Ben asked.

Travis blinked. "Strike team? No. There's a surveillance car two blocks away, but that's it."

Vascha pinched out her cigarette and lit another, the white paper turning black as though it were charred.

"So," she said, leaning back in her chair, grabbing the back of it with a free hand, "SHIELD is still alive and kicking. Assuming that we believe that you're not here to try and kill us, what now?"

Travis cleared his throat and looked at both of them in turn. He pointed at Ben. "Benjamin Levine, born in Israel, age nineteen, geokinetic. Codenamed 'Aretz.'"

He turned to Vascha. "Vascha Aleksandrov, born in Russia, age twenty, umbrakinetic. Codenamed 'Black.'"

He held up a hand and began listing names, marking each with a raised finger, "That would leave Rin Fujisaki, Ciara Monetti, Hunter Burden, and Tömörbaatar Gansükh. Are they still alive? Are they in Bangkok?"

Vascha looked at Ben, her face unreadable to most, but he could see the tension in her visage. They had known that bits and pieces of their personal information were floating around various circles of intelligence, but for each of their full names to be on SHIELD record? They could have never guessed how precious their anonymity had been to them until it was laid to waste so plainly before them.

Travis ignored their silence. "Simply put, a situation has arisen in the States, and SHIELD needs the Sons of Logan."

Ben cocked an eyebrow. "The Sons of Logan?"

"It's the name on your file," Travis offered, frowning.

The name, while not inappropriate, was strange to Ben. They had never chosen an official name for their group, nor had Logan assigned them one. But 'Sons of Logan' sounded like a biker gang.

"In any case," Vascha said, "We're not interested."

"But-" Travis started.

"At all," Vascha cut him off, leaning forward, her words dripping with venom, "Leave now. Pretend this conversation never happened, and maybe you'll live out the next week."

A long, pregnant moment passed in the empty, filth-ridden bar.

"Those two blades," Travis said, putting great effort into ignoring the girl's very real threat, his eyes on the black leather knife holsters at Vascha's hip, nearly invisible to the casual observer, "They're Wolverine's claws. The two that were sent to you. After he was murdered."

Ben and Vascha both tensed noticeably, taken off guard by the agent's casual mention of their sensei's death. Where was he going with this sudden change of topic?

"Three," Vascha finally corrected, taking a long drag on her cigarette.

Travis gave her a questioning look.

"We were sent three," Benjamin explained, "We buried the third in his garden."

"Ah," Travis said, raising his eyebrows.

"And I'll bury these two as well," Vascha said, drawing the heavy blades, each wrapped on one end with vibranium wire to make a sort of hilt, from their sheathes with a deftness that clearly made Travis uncomfortable, "In the man that killed him."

She plunged one and then the other deep into the table, right up to the hilt, the adamantium piercing the wood so easily it have been made of tissue paper.

"One in his heart," she growled, her onyx eyes searching him like some predatory animal, "And one in his head. Do you have some point you want to make in bringing up his name?"

Travis looked at the blades, then at Vascha, then at Benjamin. He adjusted his tie and cleared his throat.

"Incidentally..." he said, reaching towards the small computer on the table.

In a flash, Benjamin had snatched him by the wrist, his strong fingers locking around the limb like a vice. Vascha's hand edged towards the nearest blade's hilt, her black, dead eyes narrowing.

"Move slower," she said cooly, "Or don't move at all."

Benjamin slowly freed his grip and Travis used the newly liberated hand to wipe the beads of sweat that had formed on his brow. Cautiously, he reached over and picked up the tablet computer, this time very slowly. He thumbed a switch and it came to life, producing a high-resolution display in the air above the device.

"Are you familiar with a man named Nathaniel Essex?" he asked them.

Vascha and Benjamin exchanged glances. Benjamin raised his eyebrows and shrugged. They were not.

Travis waved a hand over the display and placed the computer flat on the table. In the air above the machine, holographic lasers built the image of a man. Strong of features, pale, with thick black hair gathered in a ponytail, dark, thick eyebrows shadowing crimson-colored eyes, and a thin black goatee framing a stern, frowning mouth. On his forehead, almost in a mockery of the traditional Indian bindi, was a small red jewel, fixed into the flesh itself.

"A mutant," Benjamin said, nonplussed.

"Wolverine's killer," Travis added.

There was a thunking noise as Vascha grabbed a blade by it's hilt and pulled it out of the wood of the table. In an instant it was at Travis' throat, her strong, black hand grabbing him under the collar as she pushed him off of his chair and on to the floor, the blade of the Logan's claw kissing the skin of his neck.

"Where is he?" Vascha snarled, "_Where?_"

"I'm here to help you!" Travis cried out, grabbing desperately as Vascha's arm, doing his best to keep his from putting any more weight down on the edge that rested on his jugular, "Settle down!"

"Vascha!" Benjamin shouted, grabbing the girl by her shoulders, trying to keep her from simply taking the SHIELD agent's head clean off of his neck, "Be calm!"

"I am calm!" Vascha growled.

Benjamin lowered his lips to his comrade's ear, "He's not worth Sensei's blade."

Vascha's eyes widened as she seemed to remember herself, but did not withdraw the knife. Instead, she closed her coal-black eyes and inhaled slowly, the shaking of her enraged body beginning to subside. She knew he was right. He could see it in her face. Additionally, whatever information Travis had would evaporate if the man suddenly had no head.

"We need you," Travis said quietly, still desperate to have the adamantium off of his skin, "If we wanted to hurt you, we would have done it. If we wanted to capture you, it would have happened years ago. We both want the same thing here!"

In one smooth movement, Vascha sheathed the blade and hauled Travis up from the floor, sitting him back down in the chair he had previously occupied. She pulled the other knife from the table and looked at the hologram of Nathaniel Essex. She looked at Travis, pointing at the digitally-represented face with the point of the claw.

"You want him dead," she said simply. She was not asking a question, "You're trying to hire us for a hit."

Travis coughed into his fist and felt the skin around his neck, wincing at the miniscule and delicate slit Vascha had made in the flesh. A thin ribbon of blood trickled down onto his collar.

"Jesus," he muttered, "They said you were high-strung, but..."

The agent shook his head, clearing the tension of the exchange. He smoothed his shirt and rebuttoned the top button of his black jacket.

"Essex calls himself Mister Sinister now. Until recently, he was working on a top-secret project with SHIELD and the last fringes of the American government. Strictly off the books. Due to his expertise in engineering and genetics, he was sought out and placed at the head of what is known as Project Noah. I'm not at liberty to discuss the particulars, but twenty-four hours ago he took over the project and oversaw the execution of nearly two hundred private contractors, scientists, and SHIELD soldiers."

"How?" Ben asked.

"I can't discuss that here," Travis intoned, "You'll be given full details when your whole team is assembled and under the condition that you accept your mission. You'll be compensated, of course. Your records will be wiped clean, your remaining families will come under SHIELD protection, and you'll be free to live the rest of your lives without looking over your shoulder."

Travis looked at the face of Essex, or _Mister Sinister_ apparently, still floating in the air above the tablet computer.

"We need him 'taken off' of the project. And we need the best to do it."

"How do we know you're not setting us up?" Vascha asked.

"You don't," Travis shrugged, "But would we have gone through all of this trouble to pull the wool over your eyes when we could have just firebombed this bar?"

Vascha took a final drag on her cigarette and crushed it on the wooden boards beneath her foot. Perhaps with a bit more vigor than was wholly necessary.

"I don't give a shit about your Project Noah," she said, "But if you can give us proof that he is the man that killed Wolverine, all you need to do is point us in his direction, and he's as good as dead."

"Just like that?" Travis seemed surprised.

"We're his retainers," Ben said simply, "We took an oath as his students. The man that killed him dies."

Travis did not, could not, understand such an oath, and he did not pretend to. He simply gave them a quizzical look and made a slight shrugging gesture.

"What now?" he asked.

Vascha stood from her chair. She grabbed Travis' leather wallet from the table and pocketed the ID badge inside. Travis made a motion to stop her, but seemed to think better of it.

"Now you tell us where to find you, and give us three days," she said, and tossed him his wallet, "And if I find you've been lying to us, you won't need to wait three days to see us again."


	6. The Thrill of the Hunt

_**Bach Ma Forest, Hue Province, Vietnam**_

Tömörbaatar Gansükh stalked his prey more quietly than the most prefect natural predator. In fact, he made no sound at all as he inched arm over arm along the dense forest floor on his belly, keeping his core muscles working, being careful not to simply drag his body through the dirt and leave a telltale smear in the earth behind him. His breathing, his heartbeat, the tiny zips and whispers of his clothing and equipment as it rubbed together when he moved, the squeaks of his boot leather as it flexed, all of these miniscule sounds were muted entirely when Gansükh used his natural camouflage; A perfect cloaking mechanism embedded in his genetic structure that made him virtually invisible to almost every form of detection. He could not be seen, heard, smelled, or detected by any telepathic means that he had yet come across. It was technically possible to ping him using some forms of sonar, but he needn't worry about that now. Not with the game he was currently tracking.

Sweat trickled down his brow, over his arms, and down his back where he could feel it pool in the curve of his spine, but it was easy enough to ignore in a climate as humid as this. The climbing was difficult; The geography of the area was almost entirely comprised of forested hills and river valleys that made for steep inclines and precious little flat ground. His elbows ached slightly from bumping on hidden patches of hard granite beneath the bed of soil and brown leaves and vines that twisted around and through the dense tree growth. As with most forests in Southeast Asia, there was an ambient buzz of wildlife at all hours, from hissing and chittering insects to families of monkeys bounding through the branches above him. Every so often, if one was attentive, you could hear the distant rumbling of small packs of elephants as they too navigated the forest, albeit with a bit more speed and less account for stealth than Gansükh.

His prey was crafty, he would give her that. Twice in as many days she had thrown him off of her trail with clever ruses and tricks designed to give the illusion that she had gone one direction, when in reality she had gone in the exact opposite. She had tracked footprints for nearly a half a mile through the undergrowth before bounding up a tree and backtracking through a small river. Gansükh grimaced as he remembered the trail coming to a dead stop and how foolish it had made him feel. But a hunt did not come without it's obstacles, and he was confident that she was running out of gimmicks now. He was hot on her heels now, after forgoing sleep the previous night to track her in the darkness while she surely slept. Not many could track after sunset in terrain like this, but Gansükh, in addition to the various lessons he had learned about hunting in the Mongolian and Chinese countryside, had been trained by one of the best: Logan.

After what seemed like an eternity of climbing uphill, he came at last to the ridge of the incline and looked over it, taking in what little view he could through the thick tree cover. The forested hills went on for miles, obscured in places by the white clouds of mist that hung perpetually over the landscape.

_She came this way,_ he reasoned, _and there's been no water on her path for nearly two miles. She'll head to the nearest river._

Gansükh frowned. It was an obvious lead, but that wouldn't make tracking his quarry much easier. He could count three separate divots in the tree growth where bodies of moving water had cut a path, and he could hear at least one more in the distance, though he could not view it through the mist.

He lay in the dirt for a long while considering his options, fighting to urge to simply charge ahead for the sake of making forward progress. The obvious choice was to follow the trail he had been tracking, detecting her movement by means of reading the forest she had moved through; Disturbed beds of grass, vines that had been parted unnaturally, even footprints, though those were rare now that she had had her fun misleading him days earlier. But there was nothing to say that she would not attempt to deceive him yet again, though he had been careful to discern the legitimate nature of the clues she had left behind this time.

Scowling, he reached behind him and grabbed the pack that he had been dragging behind him. Unzipping several pouches designed to keep the maximum amount of moisture and environmental contaminants out, he produced his QBU-88 rifle, a model favored by the Chinese People's Liberation Army, which would have appeared flat black if it were not rendered invisible by his mutant cloaking. He could not fully describe how it was that he could see the objects on his person when he was cloaked. The fact of the matter was that he couldn't, yet he never had any trouble finding bags or pockets or possessions on his body. He imagined that it was some enhancement of the human body's natural ability to detect itself and the space around it, magnified several times over. He could not see his own hands, his own arms, his own body, yet he knew exactly where they were, and exactly what they looked like at any given moment. Case in point: Though he could not see the rifle in his hands, he found the plastic covers to the telescopic sight mounted to the weapon with no difficulty, and flicked them open with his thumbs.

He pressed the stock of the rifle into his shoulder and balanced the barrel on a small mossy rock that sat perfectly on the ridge of the hill. The QBU-88 came out of the factory with a bipod system already installed, but he had removed it after stealing the weapon from a Chinese soldier years ago. Such accessories were designed for tactical marksmen firing from cover, not scout snipers in the field. Placing one eye to the sight, he began to glass the valley below, scanning the area methodically with calculated sweeps across the forest. He did not know what he had expected to see. The trees were too dense in many places to discern any life at all, and what he could see told him very little. A small trickle of a river, large, grey rocks jutting out here and there, a small clearing of grass and vines. No help whatsoever. He tried the rivers again, tracing their lengths with his telescopic sight, hoping to catch her drinking or, in what would be a tremendous lapse in judgement on her part, bathing. He doubted she would do either in broad daylight or where there was no tree cover. She would not give herself away so easily.

Suddenly, there was a snapping sound in front of him to his right. Gansükh did not move for several seconds after hearing it, for his cloaking, while rendering him invisible, would not mask the sound of ruffling underbrush if he shifted his weight suddenly. Slowly, he pulled his face away from the stock of the rifle and looked.

_Shit._

There she sat, on a rock overlooking the same valley as he, gazing long and hard into the forest not twenty feet away from him. While Gansükh was a hunter and an outdoorsman by nature, Ciara Monetti was another creature entirely. He knew it had been nearly a week since either of them had washed, but Ciara looked as though she had lived in this forest for years. Her dark, tanned skin was covered in a thick layer of dirt and mud, her toned arms caked up the elbow in red clay as though she had been digging a deep hole. He hair, black and wavy and lustrous when she wanted it to be, was a mess of tangles piled onto her head and secured in a knot with two small sticks. Her clothes, black the last time Gansükh had seen them, were similarly covered in dried earth, and torn and tattered in a dozen places. He could see she had abandoned her shoes at some point, which would explain the bogus trail he had been yet again hoodwinked into tracking. He scowled in her direction. She had fooled him again.

Gansükh counted himself lucky, though. If she sat on this ridge, she had miscalculated his traveling speed and already expected him to have descended into the valley after her. She scanned the decline down to the nearest river with a predatory intensity, no doubt looking for the drag marks that he worked so hard to avoid leaving. He saw her nostrils flare as she inhaled long and deep through her nose. Gansükh knew she was fully aware that his mutant ability would block his scent from her keen feral senses, but he supposed she couldn't be blamed for trying. If he had been foolish enough to take a leak on the trail, there would have been nothing he could do to prevent her from detecting it. Of course, he _wasn't_ that foolish, and it wouldn't be that easy for her.

He decided his best course of action would be to simply wait and see in which direction she headed. If he tried to take here here, her extraordinary hearing would surely pick up any small movements he might make in the bed of the forest floor long before he could reach her.

"Go on," he whispered aloud, knowing his mutant cloaking would mute his words before they could reach her, "Go on down."

The best possible scenario would be for her to descend into the valley within his rifle's range. He might not even have to move from where he lay right now to get a mark on her.

Ciara, it would seem, had no interest in what scenarios were best for Gansükh. She hopped from her perch on the boulder, landing on her haunches in a small puff of dried leaves, and began to stalk directly towards him. Her eyes remained affixed to the valley below, but on her current trajectory, there was a good chance she would simply run him over if she continued walking.

Gansükh cursed as he watched her inch ever closer. There was no way she knew where he was, it was just terrible fucking luck that he happened to clear the ridge at this very spot, and had chosen to remain there longer than necessary. Then again, had he pushed ahead as his instincts had told him to do, there was always the chance she would have seen his descent in the disturbance of the ground that even his mutant ability could not hide. His best chance now was to remain perfect still, prone on his belly, rifle still at his shoulder, it's barrel resting on the moss-covered rock. He slowed his breathing, lest his expanding and contracting ribcage in the ground create some unnatural-looking movement in the overgrowth.

He considered his options. Letting her pass on unmolested was the most obvious and favorable. Gansükh was a hunter, and long range was his preferred distance. He was not so prideful as to believe that he could overtake Ciara by simply popping up and grabbing her. He had known her too long and seen too many men make that same mistake who were now dead. If she did somehow detect him, the rifle was an option, but not a good one. At this range it would be unwieldy at best; It was a bolt action, so he would have time for one shot at the most before she was on top of him, and it was not nearly heavy or durable enough to serve as a melee substitute with the likes of her. He had other weapons, but they would be able to buy him time, and nothing more. If Ciara knew how close he was, the hunt would become two-sided instantly.

Gansükh tightened his grip on the rifle. She was only steps away from him. He could smell her unwashed hair and the earth that clinged to her skin and clothes. He could see her brilliant dark brown eyes as they scanned the forest looking for prey. Looking for him.

Six feet.

Four feet.

Two feet.

She stopped and perched again at the top of the ridge, so close that he could hear her breathing, slow and steady. He let out a long stream of air, realizing he had been holding his breath the last half minute or so.

_Come on, go down, _he thought, trying as hard as he could to impose his will on her mind. What he wouldn't give to be a telepath sometimes.

She sat there scanning the surrounding forest for what seemed like an eternity, though Gansükh reasoned that it had probably only been a few minutes. Finally, Ciara sighed and stood, twisting her back and stretching before she turned away and began walking down the hill Gansükh had just gotten done climbing up.

_What the hell?_ Gansükh thought, surprised by her choice of direction as Ciara walked by him, her steps labored and careful so as to avoid missing her footing in the loose leaves and toppling down the hill, _Where are you going?_

He tensed as she nearly stepped on his right calf as she passed, but if she noticed anything strange about the ground she walked on, she did not show it in her gait. Gansükh dared not move, and could not watch her descent as she passed his field of vision, only hear the slow rhythm of her steps as she moved farther and farther away.

Gansükh counted five minutes after her steps went beyond his range of hearing. Groaning, he finally allowed his protesting body to relax and shift in his position, finally taking his hands, now stiff with tension, off the rifle. Instantly the weapon became visible, having broken contact with his body. He rolled onto his back and looked down the hill.

Ciara stood leaning against a tree, not ten feet away, a devilish grin playing across her full, pouting mouth.

"Hi, Gan," she smirked, and, faster than he could react, lobbed a hunk of the red clay that stained her lowers arms and hands at his chest.

The wet earth hit his chest with a dull thud and splattered over his invisible body, essentially painting a target on his torso.

Gansükh had to admire the tactic. His mutant ability could accommodate a certain amount of excess matter on his person when he cloaked, allowing his clothing and equipment to become as transparent as he, but once the cloak was engaged, anything that came into contact with him was immune to the effects until he deactivated and then reactivated his power again.

He allowed the cloaking field to drop, his body simply popping into existence from an observer's point of view. Now visible, he looked down at his stained chest and then at Ciara, giving her a strained smile.

"How did you know where I was?" he asked, still not moving from his prone position on the ground.

Ciara smiled and nodded her head at his rifle, still on the ground where he had left it.

"I almost missed you," she admitted, "But you laid the barrel down on the moss. It left a divot."

Gansükh grimaced. A stupid mistake. One he would not have made if he had taken the time to rest during the night.

"I heard you walking down the hill," he said, an air of indignation creeping into his voice.

Ciara looked down at her feet and bent down to pick up several rocks that scattered the forest floor. Her eyes not leaving him, she began silently tossing them down the hill in perfect rhythm, each landing slightly further away than the last in the soft leafy ground. The noises the rocks made mimicked her intentionally labored steps perfectly.

She smiled after her demonstration, crossing her arms. "Looks like I win," she said.

Gansükh raised an eyebrow. "Not yet, you haven't."

Ciara frowned, and a low, ursine growl escaped her lips. It did not seem natural for the deep, throaty noise to come from a such a lovely girl, even when she was covered head to toe in dirt and mud. She lowered her arms and began to move towards him, her feet stomping in the dried leaves.

Quick as lightning, Gansükh leap to his feet and threw up his cloaking field. It would not be much help now. Ciara had seen where he stood and would be able to detect his footfalls easily in the dirt, but there was no sense in giving her an easy target. He had been struck by Ciara in the past, and it was not an experience he wished to relive.

Ciara lunged at him, or rather, at the last place she had seen him. Gansükh kept his feet planted, but leaned as far to the left as he could, hoping she would pass him by. She overshot him with her full weight, but she kept her arms wide and found the thick cloth of his jacket in her open hand. She clamped down and used her momentum to begin to attempt to throw him, using her own weight to send him sprawling. Gansükh had anticipated this, and allowed himself to be brought off of his feet. Before she could let go, however, he gripped his hands tightly around her arm and, somehow managing to find purchase with his boots in the soft earth, transferred to momentum to her. It took nearly all of his strength with the intense centrifugal force, but he manged to bring her off her feet and send her flying into a nearby tree. Ciara often put too much faith in her ability to take out an opponent with one devastating move, and could sometimes be taken off-guard with well-time counter attacks.

If she was phased at all by the impact, she did not show it, and was back on her feet almost as soon as she hit the ground. Gansükh had hoped that his throw would disorient her slightly, but no such luck. Her eyes locked onto the seemingly empty space where he stood, and her face twisted into a snarl.

She leapt at him again, almost looking as thought she was attempting the same attack, and Gansükh readied himself to counter the grappling maneuver that he thought was coming. He did not see the thick branch she had found on the ground until the last moment, when she swung it one-handed with enough force to knock him on his back. His ribs under his arm burned and throbbed from the impact and he sucked air trying to recover in time. He felt his cloaking ability sputter and falter as his concentration was broken, and he knew instantly that he was visible again. He tried to re-engage it, but his mind still raced too frantically for him to concentrate.

Ciara swung again at Gansükh where he had fallen, but her aim was wild, and he managed to roll to the side, the branch hitting the ground like a tiny explosion. He sprang to his feet and met her next blow with a blocking arm, wincing slightly at the pain of the impact of wood against flesh and bone. Ciara dropped the branch and they began a dizzying exchange of grapples and counter-grapples, their limps flying up and over and around each other as they searched for a hold that would find purchase and send each other flying before the other could reverse or break it. Gansükh thought frantically, searching for an option. He could match Ciara this way for a few moments, where strength was secondary to speed, but if Ciara decided to start throwing blows again, he would be putting his face back together later that night.

Only one idea came to him, and he jumped at it.

Just as Ciara tried again to lock one arm behind his back, Gansükh slipped her grasp and reactivated his cloak. He heard he growl in frustration as she reached out to the space that he had just occupied, but too late. Gansükh used the precious fractions of a second to leap backwards up the incline of the hill. Feeling her nearly on top of him as she followed his unconcealed footprints, he dove for his rifle, still resting on the ridge where he had been forced to abandon it. Grasping the stock with one hand, he tucked, rolled, and came up on his back, the rifle trained over Ciara's chest, dropping his cloak. She froze instantly in the face of the gun and frowned at Gansükh irritably.

"I could take that from you before you could ever pull the trigger," she said icily, he breath coming in low growls.

"You could try," Gansükh replied, also panting for air in the oppressive humidity.

They stood frozen for a moment, each considering their available choices in the next few seconds. Gansükh sincerely hoped that she wouldn't attempt to disarm him as she had promised. For one thing, that would be humiliating beyond tolerance, for another, he'd really rather not shoot her. Healing factor or no.

_Bzzt. Bzzt.  
><em>

The two looked at each other in confusion, the significance of the noise initially lost on them in the heat of the ensuing battle of skills. Ciara looked around them, searching for it's source.

_Bzzt. Bzzt.  
><em>

"Phone," Gansükh realized, and thumbed the safety of the rifle back on, placing it back on the ground and unzipped and reached into the breast pocket of his military-style jacket.

It was an old style of cellular phone, black and boxy and plain, using some of the most ancient and rudimentary technology available. Each pair of their team carried one like it to transfer short and concise messages while they were separated. They had found devices like these, old and nearly forgotten, to be the best for their purposes. They had no video features, no complicated transmission or receiving setups, and were low-tech enough that they were actually much harder to track and trace these days. Most people had simply forgotten phones likes these existed at all anymore. With a little bit of tinkering, they had discovered that these phones could latch onto the powerful data networks that encapsulated most of the earth with very little threat of detection.

Gansükh flipped open the small device and read the message. They always communicated through coded texts.

Ciara sat down in the dirt next to him, their conflict instantly forgetten and tried to read over his shoulder, but the screen was too low-resolution for her to see easily.

"It's Vascha," he said. Then, turning to look at Ciara, he showed her the message.

_Asano Naganori will soon rest easy._

Ciara's eye widened. Gansükh nodded. They both knew what the coded message meant. Somehow, Vascha and Benjamin had found a lead on Logan's killer. The text message was a recall to tell the other team members that they needed to reconvene.

"The reply," Ciara said, gesturing at the phone with something akin to reverence.

Gansükh looked down and began tapping the buttons with his dirt-covered fingers. His hands almost shook from the intensity of the moment as he wrote.

_The 47 will honor him._

The exchange was a cryptic reference to the legend of the forty-seven ronin, a semi-historical account of a group of Japanese samurai warriors who sought vengeance for the forced ritual suicide of their master, Asano Naganori. Gansükh did not like to think about the fact that all forty-seven men were themselves forced to commit _seppuku_ after their thirst for revenge had been satisfied.

Ciara stood and brushed herself off, something of the young girl that she sometimes presented herself as returning, the dirt and mud and sticks that adorned her now looking oddly out of place. She looked around them, getting her bearings.

"East to the coast?" she asked, pointing a hand and looking down at him, "Catch a boat?"

Gansükh nodded gravely and began gathering his equipment, replacing his rifle in his pack and securing it to his body. They could reach the ocean in just under a day if they could get onto the nearest road. He began to walk, the sensation vaguely unfamiliar after nearly three days of crawling on his stomach.

Ciara jogged a few steps until she was at his side and then fell to a steady pace to match his.

"Do you think this is really it?" she asked, a mixture of excitement and awe in her voice as she considered the prospect. Ciara had been one of Logan's most adoring followers. In fact, they had all been. It seemed sometimes to Gansükh that he was the only one who did not view Logan as the surrogate father that the other's had come to accept him as. It did not make him any less loyal, or his desire for vengeance any less poignant.

"Vascha doesn't send those messages out lightly," he said. He could not remember the last time their de facto leader had ever even sent such a message.

Ciara considered this and nodded solemnly. A few seconds of silence passed before Ciara chuckled abruptly, leading Gansükh to give her a questioning sidelong glance.

"So, I think we call that one a victory for Ciara," she explained, smiling.

Gansükh jerked his head in her direction as he walked, his surprised painted plainly on his face.

"How do you figure that?" he asked incredulously.

"You wouldn't have pulled the trigger. I had you," she waved a finger in his direction chidingly.

Gansükh frowned and turned his attention back to the forest. He didn't have an immediate response to that.

After a long moment he turned and smiled at her.

"What?" she asked.

"Best two out of three?"

Ciara stopped and regarded him good-naturedly. She looked off into the distance, as though having some internal discussion with herself, before turning back to him, taking a moment to unfasten her hair and retie it properly with a hair tie. She took a deep breath in through her nose and made a noise that most people reserved for tasting fine food.

"First to the coast?" she asked, a grin growing wide and bright on her dirty face.

Gansükh nodded, laughed and, just like that, faded out of the realm of visibility.

"See you there," he whispered to her, though he knew when he was cloaked she could not hear.


	7. Sounds and Swords: Part 1

_**Hi readers. The story updates are coming at a pretty good clip now, don't you think? Thanks very much to those that have left reviews. They're always a tremendous motivation to keep on hitting the keyboard. As you can probably tell, these first few chapters have been focused around introducing the cast in an organic way, so everyone can get to know them. Soon the plot will start to pick up, so get ready! There's quite a fight in the near future for our heroes. I almost feel bad for what I'm going to be putting them through.**_

_**I'd like to thank 4everablackrose for allowing me to tweak Rin slightly for the story, and Morumotto-chi for helping in her creation.**_

_**Hori out.  
><strong>_

_**Kyoto, Japan**_

Rin Fujisaki had long ago abandoned her fantasies of what it must be like to see. Ideas like color and pattern and visual intricacies were beyond her. For most of her childhood, her world was one of darkness and sounds. Smells and tastes and touches that had no three-dimensional anchor to assign them to. Her memory was a series of dark rooms that she mapped with her feet and her hands. Her father and brother were beings of scent and voices and hands that held her. Her mother, dead in the process of giving birth to her, had no form or shape at all. She was an idea that had been relayed to Rin second-hand. When she asked her father what her mother had been like, he used words like 'beautiful' that had no meaning to a girl that had been born blind. He also used words like 'kind,' though, which she had come to learn was the opposite of what the man she called 'father' was.

She could still remember so vividly the first time her mutant ability had changed her life. The exact moment that unnatural muscles formed unnatural sounds in her throat. Sounds that bounced and ricocheted over the world and returned to her, feeding her transforming, newly sensitive ears a wealth of strange and exciting information. Where there was once darkness there was... Not vision, but forms, vivid sketches of a world that existed just beyond her reach in glorious lucidity. Things that were once shapeless took form through her sensitive ears and into her mind. She knew it was not true vision. It was more akin to echolocation. It was only impressions and shades of what real seeing must be, but for the first time in twelve years, she had not been a helpless, small, blind girl.

Her mutation had given her sight.

Of course, that was not all it had given her. She remembered her father and brother's rage as she struggled to control the new muscles of her throat, while at the same time reveling in their use. From her lips would escape shrill, powerful cries that buffeted their small house, shattered glass, and even occasionally made her father and brother's noses and ears bleed from the supersonic trauma. Each time father would insist that she stop, would tell her that her mutation was a curse and a disgrace, and Rin would fall silent for days, trying to make due with her super-human ears by tapping objects objects in the house with her fingers and trying to discern the echos the noises made around her. But father did not know what he asked; To tell someone without working eyes that had been given the gift of sight, even if it were only an imitation, to ignore the world of the visible, to ignore the gifts that made her, if anything, more human than she had been, that was asking for the moon. Consequences be damned, she would not be stopped from seeing, and the elated, high-pitched screams would again find their way past her lips as she greedily took in the visions that bounced back.

Of course, a girl at that tender age had no real concept of true consequence, and when she suddenly found herself without a home, abandoned by her father and brother on the streets of Tokyo, the devastation had been total.

She did not hate them. Not anymore. She knew well now the world she had been born into, and the difficulties a family faced when cursed with an unruly mutant child. Blood and fear and death, the byproducts of the worldwide war on mutants, gripped even the smallest of nations, and every mutant was viewed as just another terrorist, another martyr waiting to happen. She had been among the last generation of mutants to be born on the entire planet, and, now seventeen, was certainly among the youngest.

She supposed a part of her could be thankful to her neglectful and unsympathetic family. In many ways, her abandonment had been one of the best things to ever happen to her, though she did not see it that way at the time. Their leaving her in the streets had probably saved her from an internment camp, where most mutants were eventually sent to die in those days. It was also on the streets of Tokyo that Logan had found her, and brought her into the fold of the last remaining X-Men. The days of her training, and the subsequent battles she had fought in with her fellow students, Logan's hand-picked strike team, though racked with pain and anguish as they were, were the first instances that Rin could remember that she felt as though she belonged. As though she had a real family. With the pain had also come joy, and friendship, and even love for her mentor, Logan.

Rin sighed and allowed her meditation to break, though she still sat on her knees on the wooden floor, her black kimono tucked beneath her. Even now, going on two years since Logan's death, the mere thought of him brought back a well of emotions that made it impossible for her to master the art of self-reflection that he had tried to teach all of them. There was not a day that went by that she did not miss him, did not wish he was here by her side. His demeanor and methods, though rough and callous in his old age, were not without fatherly warmth. His guidance, though short and terse, was always honest and true.

He had been their sensei, their protector. For a long time after he'd left, Rin had felt naked and exposed without him, as though all the demons of the world would crash through their walls and take them all as they slept. She still fought that ghost of a fear every night. She supposed in her youth she had even harbored some girlish crush on him, as ridiculous as that was. But now... Now she would just give everything to have him back for only a moment, just to tell her in that hoarse growl of a voice what it was they were supposed to do. When Hunter had received Vascha's message, she had become a well of emotions. Excited and angry and terrified all at once. She still had not fully sorted out how she felt. Of course she desired recompense for what had been taken from her, but with that desire came a swell of anxiety and dread, the source of which she could not completely understand.

She heard Hunter's footsteps long before he entered the room. Even if she could not identify most people by the sounds their feet made as they walked, which she could, the ambient echos produced by the sounds of his walking painted a picture of him in her mind. Tall, well-built, with a heaviness to his steps that was only amplified by the boots he wore. It annoyed Rin slightly that he was not dressed in his traditional kimono in Logan's dojo, but would say nothing to him about it. Hunter was as tense and manic with nervous energy as she since they had been given the news that they would finally pursue vengeance for Logan's death.

"Hello, Hunter," she said.

Most people who did not know Rin well were sometimes put off by her ability to recognize them even when they did not announce themselves, but Hunter was long past that. Avoiding the nightingale floors out of habit, even now when the tatami mats were gone and they needn't train any longer, he crossed the room to her. He lowered himself to his knees next to her and bowed deeply to the small shrine that Madam Yuriko had placed in the dojo after Logan had died.

"You can't sleep either?" he asked.

"I've been thinking about him more than usual," she replied.

Hunter made a small grunt of agreement, "Tell me about it."

She felt him shift and raise his arm to his face. He was looking at a watch.

"The others will arrive soon. Vascha said that SHIELD will pick us up from here."

"From here?" Rin asked, "Is that wise?"

She felt Hunter shrug, "It was Madam Yuriko's idea, actually. She thinks if SHIELD means to abduct or arrest us, that they'll be less likely to do it in the house of a Yakuza family."

Rin considered that for a moment and then nodded. "The Yakuza clans are stronger than most governments in Eastern Asia. SHIELD wouldn't dare provoke them."

"Well, I don't know if I would go that far, but it's a nice thought," Hunter said, though not unkindly.

They sat there for a minute or so, both enjoying the peacefulness of the room and the memories contained within. Rin recalled with a smile one of the first Kendo sessions in which Logan had paired her with Hunter. They had barely known each other then, and though he had been in Logan's fold longer than she, they were both hopelessly novice in their training. Rin, having been a shy and demure child, had barely even spoken to the other students, and was treated with as much avoidance as curiosity.

"Sensei," Hunter had protested, "I can't fight her!"

"And why not?" Logan had asked. It was a surprise to Rin; Logan rarely answered anyone that questioned his training so directly.

Hunter faltered, searching for a polite way to say what Rin knew was on his mind.

"He doesn't wish to fight me because I am blind, Sensei," Rin said to Logan in Japanese, hoping to save Hunter some embarrassment at having to state the obvious. She had known that the tall, muscular boy's Japanese was not yet very strong, and he would not understand her.

Logan grunted and spoke to Hunter in English, "She said she can mop the floor with you, Alumni."

She had felt Hunter wince. Not so much at what Logan had claimed Rin had said, but at the nickname he sometimes bestowed on him. Hunter had made the mistake of mentioning to the other students one too many times that his Grandmother Ororo and his Uncle Evan had been X-Men, and Logan took it as bragging. Rin rather liked hearing Hunter's stories of his relatives. They were like the stories of ancient samurai long dead. Hunter made them sound like mythical warriors, strong and noble, and she had been entranced by the tales. Of course, Hunter had to later admit that he had never actually met them, and his stories were all passed down to him, not first-hand accounts, but Rin still liked to hear about them. About all of the X-Men, actually.

Hunter resigned himself and raised his _shinai_, a bamboo sword that simulated a katana, in front of him. Rin responded in kind, not bothering to inform Hunter that she had not actually said that she intended to wash any surface with him. She was not even sure what that had meant.

_I must practice my English more,_ she made a mental note as she took the appropriate stance.

Rin knew that, traditionally, Kendo was practiced with a variety of protective garments, but Logan had forbade it.

"You ain't trainin' for sport," he snarled, "You're training to stay alive. When you practice Kendo with me, pain means you're dead."

And so it was that they wore only a _kendogi_ and _hakama_, little more than thick robes to protect themselves from the harsh sting of the bamboo mock-swords.

"I'm sorry about this," she heard Hunter say, and he stepped towards her, pointing his _shinai_ at her chest. He meant to simply jab at her with the sword, not to level a slash at her. It was a gesture of kindness, Rin knew, but the delicacy with which he wielded his weapon at her suddenly made her angry. She decided then and there that she was quite through with being treated as though she were helpless.

She sidestepped his lunge easily and brought her _shinai_ down on his back with a hard two-handed swipe. Not hard, but harder than he had intended to hit her. It was not a traditional Kendo strike, and in a match she would have been awarded no points, but she did not think Logan would correct her on that basis. Besides, for a reason she could not fathom, the strike had come to her easily. It felt... Good.

Even with the layer of cloth, the bamboo sword snapped loudly against his body and Hunter gasped with pain. He turned, lowered his sword, and put one hand on his back where she had struck him. He might have been wincing, but Rin could not see his face in fine detail without the sharp sounds she could make in her throat.

Rin felt the urge to apologize, even lay down her _shinai_ and prostrate herself to the boy, but she fought it away. She tried hard to think as though she were Logan, and do as he would do, and Logan most certainly did not seem the type to bow to an opponent simply because his opponent might be angry with him.

To her surprise, Hunter began to chuckle.

"Where did _that_ come from?" he asked.

"You're dead, Zephyr," Logan snarled, "Now what are you gonna do about it?"

Hunter had spent the majority of the afternoon trying to hit Rin, and never once succeeded, receiving only red welts on his body for the trouble. When the time came, Rin gave the same treatment to each of her fellow students, earning her nickname "Un-hit-able" from Logan.

Rin knew that, in those early days, her proficiency in Kendo had earned her a bit of jealousy from the other students, just as much as it had earned their respect. Vascha in particular had insisted again and again that she spar with Rin until her skin had bled from the repeated blows Rin gave her. Over time, though, it had become obvious that Rin was not simply good at swordplay, it was the area of training that she thrived in. When Logan had discovered that the harsh vibrations from holding a gun as it fired made Rin's echo-location ability cut out completely, he had reformatted her training to center almost completely around edged weapons. Rin and the rest of the students had been thankful for that. It already made them nervous enough giving a gun to a blind girl.

Hunter bowed again to Logan's shrine and stood. Rin bowed as well, and accepted Hunter's extended hand to help her raise to her feet.

"It's really happening," she said to him, and did not need to explain what she was referring to.

"Yeah," Hunter replied, "Hard to believe."

"We might die," Rin blurted out.

She felt Hunter study her with a long gaze.

"We might," he admitted, "But whoever this Sinister guy is, Logan went after him for a reason. Maybe we'll find out what that was, and maybe we won't. But if Logan had a beef with him, that's good enough for me. If it was important to Logan that this man be put in the ground, then it's important to me too.

"We took an oath that night that Madam Yuriko told us what had happened," he continued, "That whoever took our sensei from us would be repaid more times over than he could count. I plan on seeing that oath through. We owe Logan that."

Rin nodded gravely and hugged her arms, fighting off a sudden chill.

"I should get ready," she said and began to leave the dojo, walking delicately, not disturbing the squeaking boards whatsoever.

"Rin," Hunter called to her. She turned.

"I've got your back, _Un-hit-able_," he said.

Rin let out a sharp chirp from her throat. The sound bounced off of Hunter's body and returned to her. She could see his face, solemn and strong of features, but with a warm and gentle smile. Rin returned the smile.

"Thank you, Hunter."

"Before you go get your gear ready," he said, "Madame Yuriko wanted to see you."

Rin nodded and turned to leave.


	8. Sounds and Swords: Part 2

Yuriko Oyama heard Rin approaching and turned. In her old age, many things had begun to abandon her body, but her sense of hearing remained as keen as ever. Not nearly as acute as Rin's or Ciara's, but there were no sounds in her own house that escaped her.

Her ancestral home, though outfitted with many modern comforts and amenities, remained in many respects traditionally Japanese; Austere and simple, sharp architectural edges and steeps bows and curves that comprised much of the nation's sensibilities over the centuries. As was the style of the manor, much of the space had no special, specific purpose, and the walls could be reconfigured at whim by repositioning the _shoji_ partitions that created new walkways, rooms, and a variety of versatile enclaves. Only the kitchen and washrooms were dedicated spaces.

One area in particular, though, was never altered by Yuriko's own request. It was a space a the center of the house that remained forever enclosed, save for one narrow entrance. Within were the precious few artifacts of Yuriko's family that had survived hundreds of years of national conflict and trial. A ceremonial tea set, a beautifully maintained and preserved statue of the Buddha, and a worn and stained _naginata_ spear, dented and notched from battle, were among the antiques. Each had passed at least two centuries by, and some much, much more.

At the center of the chamber stood a full suit of armor, and before it rested three swords in a wooden display of sorts, each smaller in progression than the last. The armor was of remarkable quality and beauty, having been maintained rigorously by her family and restored masterfully several times in it's life. It was stained and lacquered a deep, earthy red, it's hundreds upon hundreds of iron scales bound and held together with red silk, making dozens of flexible layers to the suit that almost resembled an insect's carapace. The helmet was similarly fashioned, with a protective mask and doublet that had been made to resemble the bottom half of a man's face, though the features were exaggerated into a ghastly smile, with thick horsehair bristles in place of a mustache. The entire issue was topped with a gilded crest that jutted from the front of the helmet like a cruel and beautiful horn.

The swords, though the blades within were newer than one might expect, were similarly outfitted in the armor's traditional style; The scabbards and silk and sharkskin handles all stained and colored a deep red. She admired the work of the craftsman that had recently refitted the weapons with the new blades she had commissioned for them. The man had balked when Yuriko had told him to remove the old metal blades, nearly spilling his tea as she gave her instructions. He protested that, if there were no glaring cosmetic issues with the swords, one should do their best to ensure that the artifacts be preserved. Removing the original blades in favor of new, modern ones was a catastrophic folly. The man had even threatened to inform various Japanese historical preservation societies to protect the swords from her tampering.

Nevertheless, they came to an understanding once Yuriko had written '1,000' on a slip of paper, and continued to add zeroes to the sum until the craftsman had relented.

Besides, what good would artifacts be to real warriors, who needed real weapons?

"Come, Rin," Yuriko beckoned from over her shoulder. She sat on her knees in front of the weapons and armor. A small stick of incense burned, it's smoke curling and arching as it climbed upwards into the air. Though she knew the mutant girl could see without eyes, she tapped the tatami mat beside her to indicate direction.

Rin took her place beside Yuriko and observed her manners, bowing deeply as she kneeled. Yuriko admired her posture and form. She wondered offhand if her bows had been so good when she was younger, and not able to see as she saw now, and thusly not able to learn by imitation.

"Thank you for coming to see me," Yuriko said.

"The thanks is mine that you would call for me," Rin replied in that regal yet demure manner that young Japanese girls all seemed to possess. Yuriko smiled.

"I'd like to ask you something, Rin," she said. As she did, she reached towards the three swords and gently lifted the longest, the _katana_, from it's resting place, setting it in her lap. "And please be honest with me."

"Anything, Madam Yuriko."

Yuriko turned her head slightly and looked at Rin as she spoke, being careful to gauge the girl's facial expressions. Her winkled, thin fingers silently admired the shape and detailing in the katana's hilt and scabbard as she sat.

"How many men have you killed?"

Rin's thin eyebrows raised slightly, her milky eyes seemed to flutter involuntarily as she processed the question. The small sinew of her neck tensed as she swallowed, her mouth hanging agape just slightly before she made a move to speak.

"Fifty-six confirmed kills," she replied finally, "All in combat scenarios, all in the defense of humans or mutants who were being placed intentionally in danger. There... may be more, I cannot attest for men who may have died of their wounds."

Yuriko nodded and was about to continue when Rin said abruptly: "But Logan always taught us that we are all but parts of the team. Hands and feet and limbs that make up a body. What one does, the others have done. What one reaps, so must they all. In that sense, I have been the participant in many hundreds of enemies kills that I could not possibly count."

Yuriko found herself much more satisfied with this answer. Logan had always trained his students to think, act, move as one unyielding force. Of one mind and one purpose. It was reassuring to know that, in Rin's case at least, the training had not begun to fade with time.

"How do you feel about that?" Yuriko asked, her tone not betraying her feelings on the matter at all.

Rin considered this before answering. "I mourn the death of any life needlessly wasted. Human, mutant or animal. It has never been a great desire of mine to kill."

"Do you wish to stop?"

"A knife does not decide what it will cut, nor did the metal it was forged from choose to _be_ a knife. I am a blade in the hands of fate. I cannot go back and unmake what has been made. I am a product of the world I live in, and that is the way of things. I am trained for combat, and as long as there is conflict in which the weak and innocent will benefit from my presence, I will be there."

Yuriko looked down and once again admired the lacquered surface of the katana's scabbard. In it's reflective sheen, she could see her own face. It still surprised her sometimes to see an old woman staring back at her, her visage a map of wrinkles, her eyes nearly obscured by skin whose elasticity had started to fail long ago. She looked at Rin. A picture of youth and vitality, even her milky eyes adding to a mysterious air of beauty in the young Japanese girl's face. Her pale, smooth skin framed by black bangs and hair drawn into two short ponytails. In an odd, motherly way, Yuriko had often wished Rin would grow her hair longer to accommodate a more traditional hairstyle befitting of her culture, but she knew that the realties of combat, particularly where swords and blade were involved, made that notion folly. She often had to remind herself that Rin and her fellow students were hardened soldiers on the inside, despite what youth described in their bodies.

"Do you think the lives you've taken have made a difference?" she asked.

Rin did not expect the question, and a small crease formed in her brow as she searched for an answer. Yuriko continued before she could find one.

"In my years I have learned that, in the larger sense, very rarely does one's death come to have any real consequence. Especially where soldiers are involved. No matter how many you cut down, there will always be another to take his place. I do not dispute that you may have saved as many lives to account for the ones you have taken, but in the end, do we not still live in a world of death and fear?"

Rin searched and came up with an answer. "We do, but wars are merely a series of smaller battles. While the death of one soldier does not equal a victory for his vanquisher, enough small battles, enough skirmishes, enough fighting can eventually turn the tides."

"Yes," Yuriko admitted, "But every so often, there is that special case, where the death of one can change the course of history itself. Logan was one such case. It is no exaggeration that your master was one of the greatest warriors in the history of mankind. His absence in the world is felt like large waves in a small pond. His death opened and closed many pathways for history to travel down. Just one man's death may have very well changed the fate of this world."

"And you," she continued, "Are tasked with eradicating the man who defeated him."

Rin swallowed. The incense burned down to it's last ashes and snuffed out in a fading red glow.

"I know little about this man called Sinister. What I can gather about him seems a mixture of fact and legend and outright falsehood. What I do know is that he has played a larger hand in the events of the modern world than anyone has yet guessed. It would seem that his victory over Logan was yet another stepping stone towards the fruition of whatever plan he may have for our world. As before, history sits upon the edge of a blade, teetering on the death of just one man. On one side, Sinister may fall at the hands of Logan's students, and his web of schemes may falter and crumble. On the other, you may all go to your deaths just as Logan did before you, and then there truly will be nothing and no one that can stop him."

A long, melancholy moment passed as Yuriko allowed Rin to digest this information. She was not so foolish as to believe that Rin had never considered this concept in the past, but she felt that it needed saying out loud, at least to one of them. While the others, like Vascha and Ciara, might have been fueled by blind fury and rage, and others, like Hunter, bound by a sense of duty, someone on the team required the knowledge of the philosophical and historical gravity of their position. She preferred that that one was Rin. Perhaps because of the kinship she saw in the Japanese girl, or perhaps in the fact that she saw so much of herself as a younger woman in this youth.

"I don't know..." Rin said finally, her small voice wavering slightly as she continued, "That we are prepared, Madam Yuriko. If Logan was as you say, and was still defeated, then what chance do we have?"

"He was one where you are many," Yuriko insisted, perhaps too harshly, "You endured every test and hardship he ever faced you with. Each of you has the same warrior's spirit that he possessed. Besides, moments like this are never convenient, and never wait until you are ready. Destiny calls, and you must answer. And destiny, though it is many things, is rarely fair."

Yuriko looked down at the katana and, finally, with extreme reverence and care, began to slowly draw the blade. It made no noise at all, but the whole of the weapon seemed to hum and vibrate the air around it as it draw along the inside of the scabbard.

"But that does not mean that you are without hope," Yuriko smiled, "Nor without the finest tools to bend destiny to your will."

Rin's sensitive ears had pricked when the blade had been drawn, and when the length of it finally cleared the scabbard, her mouth fell slightly agape with awe, and Yuriko knew that Rin recognized the harmonic frequency of the metal. It was, up to this point, a metal that was unique to a very few people.

"Adamantium," the young girl whispered, raising a hand to her mouth, covering her shock, "You've had your family's swords refitted with adamantium!"

"Yes," Yuriko said, holding the weapon in front of her, gazing into it's beauty, "The last reserves kept in my family's possession for nearly forty years. I've spent a lifetime and a fortune deciphering my father's methods of working with the metal, and nearly as much time training my swordsmith in it's finer intricacies. Specifically, it is adamantium folded around a vibranium core."

Yuriko folded the sleeve of her robe around her hand and rapped the surface of the blade lightly with her covered knuckle, for it was disgraceful to touch a blade such as this with naked fingers, though there was no chance that the natural oils of her skin would affect the almost supernatural metal. It emitted a sublime hum, like the tolling of a massive, perfectly constructed bell.

"With these swords," Yuriko gestured at the katana and then the tanto and wakizashi, still in their wooden stand, "You could cut through Death himself."

Yuriko turned the katana in her hand and held the hilt out to Rin, "And they are yours."

Tears began to form in Rin's widening eyes, and she tried to cover her face with her hands. If she meant to speak, she could not seem to make the words leave her lips.

"Take it," Yuriko urged.

"I can't..."

"_Take it._"

Slowly, with hands that trembled with every inch they moved forward, Rin reached out a hand and grasped the handle of the sword. Immediately, Yuriko released it, forcing the girl to tighten her grip, to truly feel the weight of the weapon. Rin emitted a gasp of awe and, hesitantly, brought her other hand forward and closed it around the bottom half of the hilt. As before when Yuriko tapped it, the blade emitted a low, penetrating hum when Rin closed her fingers tightly on the sharkskin.

"This is..." she whispered, still fighting tears, "The most beautiful object I've ever felt."

She turned and looked at Yuriko with eyes that did not see. "I could not possib-"

"You _can_ take them," Yuriko cut her off, "And you will. I have no use for swords, child. And my clan grows weaker every day. The X-gene runs strong in my family. Even those without mutant gifts have not borne children in many years. Our days are numbered here. Either you will take them, or someone else will take them from me by force. Or steal them after I have died."

Yuriko leaned in and placed a hand on Rin's shoulder, still shaking with admiration for the sword she held, and the gravity of knowing that such a remarkable weapon was now her property alone.

"I wish that this was some object of magic, a blade that would grant you assured victory, but in the end, weapons do not win the day," she told the girl, "But some are of such a quality that fate may smile upon you, simply because you wield it with strength and purpose. Bullets and blades have changed the course of mankind in the past, Rin, and while this sword will not cure our world, and will not purge your body of the wretched virus that causes all of this conflict, it will shield you like nothing else can, and plunge your enemies into the very center of Hell, should you have the will to send them. Adamantium is one of the most remarkable substances the world has ever known. You could study it a hundred days and discover two-hundred new things about it. True, in the end it did not save your master, but that is not to say that it will not save you."

Rin simply nodded slowly and, reluctantly, reached for the scabbard and slid the sword back into it, looking as though she could not bear the thought of covering the exquisite blade. It closed tightly around the hilt with a satisfying click. Without speaking, Yuriko took the weapon from her and began to fasten it to Rin's waist, tucking it in and through the length of silk she wore around her midsection. Rin did not speak, but raised her arms above her shoulders to accommodate the old woman's task. Turning, Yuriko did the same with the shorter wakizashi. The tanto, the size of a large dagger, she tucked into Rin's robes on the opposite side.

Somewhere outside, in the dead night air, they could both hear familiar voices, though Yuriko knew Rin could likely hear them with much more clarity than she.

"They're here," Rin smiled. For a moment, a touch of the young girl that she was shone through her porcelain, solemn visage she wore, and she was excited. She helped Yuriko to her feet and felt the weapons at her sides, adjusting them slightly this way and that. Rin looked at her.

"I don't know how I can ever thank you. I don't know how _any_ of us could ever thank you."

Yuriko smiled. "You do honor to my clan, to my family, and to me," she said, "I ask only that you fight bravely, and with all of your heart."

Yuriko took Rin's offered arm and began to follow her out of the chamber and into the outer rooms of the house to greet the students that had just arrived.

"Of course," Yuriko grinned, "Winning and coming back alive would be a splendid gift for a lonely old woman."


	9. The Last Supper

_**Hi, readers. Boy, I really know how to stretch out the beginning of a story, don't I? Just a few more chapters 'til all hell breaks loose. I'm as excited as you guys to see it develop. Hope you're all enjoying the slow burn thus far.**_

_**Hori out.**_

"Vascha!" Ciara called out to the Russian girl, "Come here, _Kukla_!"

Vascha smiled and shook her head slightly as she met Ciara on the stone path leading up to Yuriko's home. It was somehow not at all unusual that the two pairs would arrive at the estate at almost the exact same time. Vascha had set a three-day time constraint, and three days had passed.

"Is that still the only Russian you know?" the black-skinned mutant asked, dropping her bulky black duffel bag, putting a hand on a braced hip and looking at Ciara and Gansükh respectively, "Not spending your downtime hitting the books, I suppose."

"We spent the last couple months chasing dead leads in Cambodia," Gansükh explained, shifting his own bag from one shoulder to the other, "Since then we've been keeping sharp in Vietnam, waiting for our shift change."

Vascha nodded. It had been their agreed-upon cycle that two members of the team would always stay at Yuriko's mansion as a measure of protection both to themselves and the old woman, while the other four split into pairs and did their best to track down any information they could find on Logan's last known whereabouts. The intel was rarely reliable, but it was safer from a detection point of view if the team maintained smaller splinter groups that sought out leads individually, rather than have six mutants travel all at once to the same locations it Southeast Asia. Such activity would doubtless bring suspicion down upon them, even in nations that maintained a policy of looking the other way.

Ciara grinned and threw her arms around the smaller girl and squeezed her tightly, as much a gesture of friendship as it was a small jape on her part. She could bear-hug a large tree in half this way, and Vascha's black eyes widened as the breath left her in a gasp. Ciara lifted her off the ground, still holding her tight. Vascha looked down at her and began to laugh, what little laughing she could do with her body so compressed.

"I missed you, Black," Ciara said.

"Nice... to see you... too," Vascha managed, and used a free hand to pat Ciara lightly on the cheek.

Ciara chuckled and released. Vascha landed easily, with as much spring in her step as if Ciara's hug had been like any other. She made a face and twisted her back, a faint series of pops working their way up her spine.

"Thanks," she said, "I've had a kink there since we got off the plane."

Ciara turned and looked at Benjamin. The olive-skinned Israeli boy raised his arms in a gesture of surrender.

"I don't need a hug. My back is fine," he joked, though he still regarded Ciara with a measure of caution. Ciara supposed she couldn't blame him. She was known for dishing out her unique brand of affection whether it was asked for or not.

Gansükh walked to Ben's side and clapped a hand on his shoulder.

"So how have you two been?" the Mongolian asked, "Thailand still as rough around the edges as it was last time?"

"It was," Ben smiled and looked at Vascha, "But Vasch' smoothed out more than a few troublemakers while we were there."

They all chuckled as Vascha sighed, putting a cigarette in her mouth and lighting it, pulling deeply on it as she filled her lungs with nicotine.

"Boys should keep their hands to themselves," she said, exhaling smoke through her nose in two black streams.

"But not Ciara, right?" Gansükh chuckled at his own jest.

Vascha made a show of looking Ciara up and down, as though she had never seen her before.

"Especially not Ciara," she mused, puffing at her cigarette. Ciara rolled her eyes.

The banter was amusing and came naturally; They had all known each other for years now, and even months apart could not break the bond of kinship that had been forged long ago. But nevertheless, Ciara could smell the nervous energy and anxiety that emanated from each of them. Gansükh, usually the go-to source for a lighthearted comment or two, had been silent nearly the entire three-day trip back to Japan. He had already said more in two minutes than he had in the past twelve hours. Ben, as hard to read as he had ever been, was perhaps even more closed-off and guarded than he had been last she'd seen him. And Vascha... Ciara could practically taste the rage and bloodlust that radiated from her like a perfume, despite her easygoing demeanor. She could relate to that. Her connection to Logan ran deep, and his absence still smarted when she allowed herself to dwell on it.

Without really knowing why, Ciara looked down at her wrist where she had tattooed their sensei's name into the tender flesh almost two years ago. It was both a brand of origin and a reminder. Tattoos did not agree with her healing factor though, and it had begun to fade yet again. She would have to have the work redone soon.

_If I even live that long_, she thought bitterly and frowned.

In turn, the other three seemed to sense the tension of the moment as well. There was a long pause of silence as each tried to think of something, anything to say. Vascha took another drag of her cigarette and Ciara wrinkled her nose. She often told Vascha how many horrible chemicals she could smell in the smoke alone, but the girl had always shrugged her off.

_I suppose we all have our habits. Our eccentricities._

"Vascha Aleksandrov, I know you would never dream of smoking on my estate."

They turned to see Madam Yuriko, flanked on either side by Hunter and Rin. They walked slowly, to keep pace with the elderly Japanese woman, and Rin kept her hand lightly perched in the crook of Madam Yuriko's arm to steady her.

Vascha grimaced and dropped the cigarette into the gravel, hastily crushing it out with her boot and waving her hand in front of her face to clear the smoke that still wisped out of her mouth and nose.

"No, ma'am," she said, and glared at the other three around her, daring them to contradict her.

"Good," Madam Yuriko said ominously and stopped before them, giving each a long, steady gaze. "You're all looking well. Come inside, children. We have much to talk about. And I would have you enjoy a meal with me before you go."

* * *

><p>Ciara tore into her fourth rice ball, hardly bothering to chew at all before swallowing, and drained the last of the tea from her small clay cup. If there was one thing she had always missed about being away from Madam Yuriko's estate, it was the food. By the looks of it, Vascha, Ben and Gansükh would agree. They sat on their knees at a long, sparsely decorated wooden table, the contents of which had dwindled down to scraps as the six had sated their appetites on rice dishes, fish platters, miso soup, fried vegetables, tofu and green tea. Rin and Hunter ate slightly less than the others, but they did not have the achingly empty stomachs that could only come from quick travel over long distances. Nevertheless, they had been trained to inhale food like the fuel that it was, and made short work of their own slightly smaller portions.<p>

Madam Yuriko picked gingerly at her bowl of rice with her chopsticks, but hardly ate at all. Ciara was nonplussed by this. Madam Yuriko always seemed to drink more tea than she ever ate. The old woman contented herself with watching and listening as the six had talked and bantered and exchanged stories of their last few months apart from each other. Every so often, she would smile or cover her mouth and give a slight chuckle as Gansükh or Hunter related some humorous anecdote, but as always she remained contented and detached. A motherly, observing presence to the six.

Ciara tossed the last bit of rice in her mouth and chewed. There was a part of her that had been saddened to leave the forests of Vietnam behind. A wild part of her that looked upon home-living and friendship and the world of man with disdain, that longed to shed her vestiges of humanity, but she pushed it into the background and allowed herself, for a short while, to be a girl amongst friends; Happy to have a roof over her head, food in her belly, and laughter in her ears.

"Yeah, and then what happened?" Ciara heard Hunter say, and realized that Vascha had been telling a story the she had only half been paying attention to.

"So I spent the better part of a night trying to find the nerve to talk to her," Vascha said, rubbing the back of her neck and shaking her head with a smile, "I finally buy her a couple drinks, I spend _two hours_ talking to her, wondering if she's at all getting, you know, the _signals _I'm sending. When finally, Ben comes over and whispers in my ear..."

Vascha turned and looked at Benjamin, nodding at him to finish for her. Ben smirked and said quietly: "She was a _kathoey."_

Gansükh and Hunter roared with laughter. Ciara quickly sorted through her rusty knowledge of the Thai language, looking for the word's English equivalent, and soon was laughing as well. Even Madam Yuriko smiled and covered her mouth with a hand out of modesty. Only Rin seemed to not understand.

"What is 'kathoey'?" she asked, perplexed, "I don't know that word."

"A _kathoey_ is a Thai name for a type of transgender, Rin," Ciara explained, "A man who dresses and behaves like a lady."

"Oh," Rin said mildly. Then, seeming to finally understand Vascha's plight, turned to her with wide eyes. "_Oh!_"

Gansükh began to laugh again with renewed vigor, Rin's ignorance, and then her sudden realization only adding to his enjoyment of the story.

"I don't know how they do it!" Vascha said, hands raised above her head in resignation, "_I_ can't even look as good as they do on my best day!" She gestured at her chest, "And I was _born_ with these!"

Ben nearly spit out the tea he had been drinking, and now he was laughing as well. Ciara's sides had begun to hurt from holding in the urge to suppress her own guffaws that threatened to bubble out of her.

The chuckles had finally begun to fade when Madam Yuriko shifted slightly forward on her bent knees and made a delicate coughing noise. It was her customary call for attention, and, slight as it was, each of them heard it immediately and fell silent, their eyes fixing on the regal, elderly woman.

"My father would have been most disappointed in this table," she said with a smile, "He did not care for laughter or colorful stories at meal times. I, on the other hand, am quite happy to see you all well and in good spirits.

"But," she sighed, "Fate would have it that we must delve into darkness at this time, and discuss what lies ahead for all of you."

Ciara felt her full stomach turn slightly, as the grim reality of the situation returned to her. The others likewise seemed to sober from their jovial mood. Backs stood a little more rigid. Jaws clenched a little more tightly.

Madam Yuriko stood and began to slowly pace around the table as she spoke, looking at each of them as she did so.

"I see your master in each of you. I know he would be proud of you all. Both in the warriors you have become, and the people that you are. Though I am deeply saddened that I must watch you go under these circumstances, I am glad to have this time with you.

"I can not and would not ever dream to ask you to stay your hands, abandon your oaths, and leave a death so unavenged. That is not my place, and I know none of you would heed my words if I tried. I ask only that you remember your allegiances to each other as well as to Logan. Look around you. In each face you see, there is a comrade that will go as far as you will go, endure the same that you endure, and when you strike true, so do the others. Such is the fate of _ronin_. Such is the way of _bushido_. To set your own life aside for your companions, and the life of your master.

"You are among the last of a dying breed. Not just mutants, but true warriors of principle and honor, as Logan and the X-Men were before you. Our world has become one of tragedy and deceit and shadow, and perhaps it's last remaining chance of redemption rests in your hands. You have this opporunity now to send a message to the deceivers and snakes of this world that profit from the annihilation of a people, that speed the death of an entire facet of humanity, that even the smallest group of individuals can come together to overcome true darkness. Whatever you do in this next stage of your lives, remember always that you must never sacrifice your own soul, your own dignity, to see your mission fulfilled."

With that last sentence, Madam Yuriko stared long and hard at Vascha. The girl's devotion to Logan and the team stemmed from the tragedy of losing her parents and being forced into the bondage of a mutant internment camp before she even entered her teenage years. Logan and the last remaining X-Men had been her one and only salvation from a certain death all those years ago in the United States. Her determination and her rage made her formidable, and her keen mind had granted her an unofficial position of leadership on the team, but Ciara knew as well as any of the others that the Russian-born mutant's anger could blind her at a moment's notice just as easily as it could make her strong as iron. Vascha tried to match Madam Yuriko's gaze, but in the end her black eyes fell to the floor.

"I am honored to come to the last days of my life having known you all," Madam Yuriko finished, bending slightly and bowing her head to them. They returned the gesture and said words of thanks, barely above a whisper.

A panel of wood in the center of their dining table abruptly slid away noiselessly, revealing an artfully hidden computer terminal set deep into the surface. On it, a three-dimensional map of Madam Yuriko's compound came to life, a red light blinking in the empty air above it, indicating a foreign aircraft in the estate's immediate airspace.

"Ah," said Madam Yuriko, "Just in time."

* * *

><p>Ciara had to admit that she was impressed with the aircraft that SHIELD had sent to collect them. She had spent so long traveling by relatively dated and low-tech means that she had almost forgotten some of the true marvels that now controlled the sky in much of the developed world. Similar to a large helicopter in size and shape and black in color, it used a system of repulsors and statically manipulated air currents to maintain it's altitude and make it's swift maneuvers through the sky. It made almost no noise save for a low-frequency hum that a casual observer would probably never notice. It sat in the air as though it weighed nothing at all, bobbing lazily this way and that as the pilot counter-steered against light gusts of wind that buffeted it.<p>

They stood in Madam Yuriko's garden, the only location on her compound where it would make any sense to attempt to airlift the team out. The center of the landscaping was a large stone garden the size of a basketball court that had been raked in such a way that patterns in the gravel achieved and aesthetically pleasing flow. Ciara had spent a good deal of time practicing her meditation here, and was slightly perturbed that they would undoubtedly be forced to walk on the stone garden's surface to reach the carrier, but she supposed there was nothing to be done about it.

Each of them carried a bag of varying sizes, dimensions, and weight. From Rin's belongings, which seemed to consist only of a small rucksack of personal belongings and a set of swords Ciara had not seen her use before, to Vascha and Gansükh, whose military-style duffle bags bulged with hardware and various combat-specific supplies. Ciara noted with some satisfaction that Vascha had not packed Logan's claws, but rather kept them, as always, sheathed at her hips.

Ciara was about to ask if someone should try to signal the carrier, when a small piece seemed to break off of the belly and drop slowly and softly towards the ground, landing lights starting to periodically blink on the underside. Where the interior of the larger section of the craft was now exposed, they could see the dim red glow of nighttime operational lights inside the cabin.

As the separated section drew nearer, Ciara could begin to make it out more clearly in the black night sky. It was little more than a floating platform, almost like an industrial lift, though it was attached to nothing but the naked air around it. As it settled inches about the gravel garden, Ciara could see the platform's sole occupant. A young man, perhaps no older than the average age of the team, dressed in a black suit and coat. He wore a specially fashioned headset and eyepiece made of clear plastics and glass, which Ciara knew would relay flight informations and radio messages from the larger carrier.

A section of the railing that surrounded the platform separated and allowed the man to step down onto the gravel, his leather shoes crunching as he walked towards them. As he approached, he gave Vascha a curt nod and extended a hand.

"Ms. Aleksandrov," he said.

Vascha looked at his outstretched hand and, after a pause, took it, holding the handshake for only a moment before releasing.

"Agent Travis," she replied.

Agent Travis looked at each of them in turn, nodding slightly as he surveyed them.

"Madam Yuriko," he said, looking at the elderly woman in kimono and obi, "It's a great honor to meet you, Ma'am. Your father was a close friend of SHIELD many years ago."

Madam Yuriko did not offer a reply, but merely bowed her head in thanks. If Travis was offended by this, he made no show of it.

"Time is against us," Travis said to them, "You'll be briefed en-route to the Helicarrier."

He made a show of gesturing towards the hovering platform. None of them moved. Travis looked at Vascha questioningly, apparently not expecting the cold reception.

Finally, Vascha stepped forward and turned to face the team. She dropped her bag and brushed her black bangs to the side, though they were short enough that they simply returned to their place hanging over her forehead. Ciara had to struggle to see her in the low light even with her keen eyesight, but she was used to that.

"Last chance," she said, crossing her arms over her chest, "After this, we're locked in. No going back, no turning around."

Vascha smiled then, her features almost totally dark in the night, and said: "Who's not ready for this?"

Hunter stepped forward first, hefting his bag easily over a muscular shoulder as he walked towards the platform. Gansükh and Ben followed closely after, both nodding at Vascha as they passed.

Ciara began to walk, wincing slightly as her boots dug into the beautifully maintained gravel. She eyed Agent Travis as she walked by him, but he did not seem the least intimidated by her stare. Hunter extended a hand to her and hoisted her up onto the platform.

Ciara turned to see that Rin had embraced Madam Yuriko in a hug. The old woman looked strangely alarmed as such intimacy, but seemed to find herself again and returned the gesture. With her sensitive ears, Ciara could hear Rin thanking the woman. At first, she thought it was simply a generalized acknowledgment, but Ciara quickly realized that Rin was being very specific about something. What, she couldn't be sure. Finally, Rin broke the embrace and picked up her bag, jogging quickly to the platform and leaping onto it. Ciara could see the faintest hint of tears in the small girl's eyes.

Lastly, they were joined on the platform by Vascha and Travis. Vascha tossed her bag over the railing before jumping on herself, and it landed on the plastic and metal floor with a dull, heavy thud. Travis said something into his headset and the platform began to ascend immediately.

Ciara heard a groan and turned to look at Ben, his faced screwed up in displeasure as they gained altitude. His connection to the earth made him less than agreeable when he was forced to travel by air. There was a time when having his feet off the ground for even an hour had made him physically ill, but Logan had managed to train some of that out of him with a variety of breathing exercises and meditation. It was a good thing. Somehow, Ciara didn't imagine that SHIELD's helicarrier would be making many pit stops.

Ciara looked over the edge of the railing and saw Madam Yuriko, growing smaller every second, watching them as they ascended into the small vessel. A sudden wave of sadness washed over her and, despite herself, she raised a hand and waved it emphatically at the woman. To her surprise, Madam Yuriko returned the gesture, and soon everyone was waving goodbye to the old woman who had watched over them these past years.

_We must look like a bunch of kids leaving on a cruise ship,_ Ciara mused.

Soon they were at the belly of the carrier, and as magnetic locks engaged and the platform section was reintegrated and attached, Madam Yuriko, her garden, her house and what little normalcy they had enjoyed when they were there, disappeared with a hiss of pressurized air.


	10. The Mission

_**Hi readers!**_

_**I received a few messages asking about my writing methods, and I thought I'd take a minute to answer here, since they all sort of relate to each other. If anyone else would ever like to send personal queries about the story, or writing technique/method, please feel free! It's good to know that people have enough interest in my writing to ask at all.**_

_**Firstly, yes, I have the majority of this story sketched out already, though only in the vaguest sense. I'm not the type of person to have specific outlines for each chapter or anything. I know where the characters are going, I just don't know how I'll get them there all the time. Although there are a few specific scenes in my head that are begging to get out later on.**_

_**I tend to use an exercise in writing long adventure/quest stories like this, which is to dig as big a hole as I can for my main characters in the prologue and first chapter, then spend the rest of the story getting them out. In this case, the hole is the fact that our main characters are mutants in a world where mutants are dying out, the X-Men are gone, and Logan is dead. I actually wrote the first few thousand words having no idea who my main villain was going to be! Then I decided to add Sinister, and from there the story writes itself.**_

_**Yes, I do a lot of research for my stories to get the mood/environment/characters right for each location, but a lot of my knowledge of detail comes from firsthand experience living in Southeast Asia for a time, and having many Japanese, Thai, and Vietnamese friends. When all that fails, I use wikipedia! :D**_

_**Lastly, yes, I do really write comic books for a living. No, I can't tell you what they are. Sorry, but my anonymity is very precious to me here. I do hope to one day write for a large company like Marvel or DC, and I don't honestly know how those companies feel about writers who use their spare time writing fan fiction, ya know? I view this as an exercise in writing characters that I didn't personally create, which is one of the harder things about writing for name-brand comics. Maybe one day I'll have the opportunity to write a story just like this one in a real X-Men spin-off book, and then I'll find my way back here and let you guys know. ;)**_

_**I've wasted enough space. Let's get crackin'. This is a long one, so buy a hat and hold onto it.**_

_**Hori out.**_

_**PS: Haretrigger - It was never said that any of the Sons of Logan removed Wolverine's claws personally. Three were sent to Madam Yuriko's estate, already removed from his body. You can find that passage in The Proposal. The location of the rest of Logan's adamantium skeleton, or how the claws were removed, remains a mystery to the Sons, but it will be a factor later in the story.**_

_**Somewhere above the Pacific Ocean**_

After their bags containing their gear and personal wares had been inspected and stowed, they had been led to a small, cramped briefing room situated on the lowest level in the stern of the transport carrier. They were almost directly beneath the cabin, Hunter surmised, but they were also most likely adjacent to the engine room, judging by the dull hum that had gotten progressively more noticeable as they had gone down two decks to reach the small chamber. It was as familiar to Hunter as any military-style war room Logan had familiarized them with. Sound and transmission-dampening metals and insulation lined the walls, floor, and ceiling, and a dozen plain chairs bolted to the bulkhead were spaced around a table in the center of the room. Agent Travis motioned for them to take their seats, and they did.

"What you're about to see and hear is both highly sensitive and highly classified," the SHIELD agent said, smoothing his black hair, which had ruffled slightly in his trip on the platform, "This cannot become public knowledge, and any indication that an information leak has taken place will result in arrest and military trial under SHIELD jurisdiction."

Hunter snorted. He couldn't help himself. Travis turned his head and stared at him intently, waiting for an explanation.

Hunter jerked a thumb towards Rin, who had taken a place beside him at the oval-shaped metal table. "She's blind, Travis. What is she going to see, exactly?" Hunter waved a hand, motioning towards the middle of the table where a holographic display was coming to life. The lasers in the air glowed intensely and washed the small, dark briefing room of the transport in shifting shades of color, shimmering like lights beneath the surface of a swimming pool.

Travis looked at Rin, at a loss for a moment. Hunter supposed he couldn't be blamed. People were often caught between treating Rin's blindness with an exaggerated delicacy, or forgetting about it entirely when they discovered that, in many cases, she could make do just fine with her keen ears and echolocation. Holograms and vid screens, however, were beyond her senses.

"It's alright," the Japanese girl said, he voice thin and soft, "They can tell me what I'm missing later." She nodded towards the rest of the team, who also sat around the table at varying degrees of attention. Ciara, pumped full of anxious energy from being cooped up in the small vessel, leaned forward, her chin resting on folded arms, a heel softly tapping on the plasticine floor, her eyes fixed on the holographic interface. Ben, miserable from having to endure another long flight after so brief a time on the ground in Kyoto, sat far back in his chair, massaging one temple with his hand and breathing at controlled, steady intervals. Gansükh was similarly situated, leaning back from the table, though his posture was more that of a man at ease than annoyed or vexed as Ben was. Hunter knew that Gansükh was likely just as on-edge as the rest of them, but he was a hunter to the core, and would never betray his own anxiety by putting it on display. Vascha sat at rigid attention, her eyes probably fixed similarly on the display in front of all of them, though Hunter couldn't be sure where exactly she was looking with her large, pool-like eyes.

"I see," Travis said, the rhythm of the speech he had meant to give now obviously thrown off keel, "Let's continue then."

Travis flicked a finger across his own personal tablet of semi-transparent glass, and the hologram in front of them shifted from a formless mass of swimming color to a representation of cells and micro-organisms seen at a highly magnified level.

"Terminus, an RNA classified virus, observed here through an electron microscope at roughly ten million times magnification," Travis announced, and Hunter could feel each member of the team, himself included, bristle with tension. It was unusual to see the most direct cause of all the abuse their species had suffered in the last few decades summed up in one floating picture of shapes that had no real base of reference in their own flesh and blood lives. Nevertheless, the power of the image was palpable to them. The virion particles appeared... not harmless, but certainly not malevolent in these pictures. The image described them in tones of black and grey, their spherical structure dotted with fur-like appendages floating carelessly through space. They were looking into the very jaws of the monster than had effectively destroyed mutantkind, yet the image itself was completely non-threatening. The effect was at the same time over and underwhelming.

"Documented and classified in twenty-forty by Dr. Hank McCoy, we still do not know the origin of the virus, nor have we affirmed a 'patient zero' from which to determine a pattern of growth and transmission. I'm sure you're familiar with the details of the organism. Transferred most directly through skin-to-skin or sexual contact, it attaches itself to any human or mutant that carries the X-gene and attacks the reproductive organs, effectively sterilizing them by infecting the ovaries and testes with a very subtle, almost impossible-to-detect form of cancer. How much time is needed for the virus to do its work varies greatly from case to case, but it has been clear for some time that every living mutant and X-gene carrying human has been infected for some time now. All efforts to create a vaccine have proven futile."

Hunter found himself confused for a moment. This was all readily accessible public information. What exactly was so sensitive about it?

Travis swiped a finger across his tablet, and the microscopic photograph was replaced by a digitally rendered representation of the virus, animated to show it attaching to healthy living cells and destroying them. It was all sped up, of course. The actual virus took years to accomplish what they were being shown in several seconds. Hunter felt an odd, fleeting ache in the pit of his stomach as he watched the animated cells corrupting and becoming cancerous. Travis continued.

"It was determined, due to the sophisticated nature of the virus, and the fact that, unlike the majority of natural viral infections, this one seems to run it's course satisfied with simply preventing it's host from reproducing, that Terminus was intentionally manufactured and introduced into the human and mutant population with the express purpose of wiping out the mutant species. As of this time, no one has claimed responsibility for this crime."

"We know all of this already," Ciara said harshly. Hunter guessed that the video was probably causing her as much distress as he. He was grateful when Travis swiped again over his tablet, the image above them changing in kind. Now it showed several scans of official government documents stamped with the seals of the FDA and CDC, as well as the Department of Mutant Affairs. All meaningless now, of course, as there was no longer an officially recognized United States to speak of.

"Twenty years ago, it was determined by the United States government that, as every mutant had already been infected, the study of Terminus was no longer to be listed as a high priority. Mutant/human relations being what they were for the past few decades, it's rather surprising they continued research for as long as they did."

"You mean they decided that it was probably best to just focusing on killing and capturing mutants, since we wouldn't have paid attention even if a cure was discovered," Vascha said, her tone and expression remaining steady and even.

"Yes," Travis replied simply, matching Vascha's impartiality, "We could talk about the follies of the American government, Ms. Aleksandrov, or we can discuss the situation at hand."

Vascha stared at Travis for a moment before tilting her head and waving her hand slightly in a 'Go ahead' gesture.

The hologram returned to an abstract wash of meandering colors as Travis began to address them again.

"SHIELD, despite it's ties to the United States, has always maintained the ability to function outside of any direct government influence. When the American government collapsed several years after the mutant known as Wanda Lehnsherr executed her devastating attack on the Eastern coast of the United States, SHIELD lived on as a fringe entity, inheriting much of the former country's military hardware and personnel, their defense and research projects and even a limited number of former US politicians who now enjoy our protection in anticipation of the country's resuscitation."

"Fat chance," Ben huffed. Though the oldest of them had been only babies when the Scarlet Witch had unleashed her full fury on the American nation, they had all heard the stories, seen the pictures and the videos, of the destruction of many of the East coast cities that could only be described as biblical. No one knew exactly what had inspired the old Witch's wrath. The most agreed-upon theory was that the death of her brother Pietro and the rest of Magneto's former Brotherhood had driven her past the point of madness. In any case, no one would know the truth now; Wanda had taken her own life when the extent of her powers had been exhausted, placing the human death toll somewhere in the millions and leaving thousands of square miles a crumbled, smoking ruin, her warpath stretching from Philadelphia to Raleigh. Hunter could not see how anyone could hope that America would shake off such a crushing blow and revive herself. It had been a wonder that the nation had managed to hobble along for as long a time as it did. Much of the former United States was now a war-torn, anarchy-ridden wasteland, depleted and hollowed out by decades of the mutant/human civil war. A towering nation brought to it's knees by the slow and painful dissolution of it's infrastructure.

"Three years ago," Travis said, "SHIELD decided to dust off some old research projects, and some scientists were assigned to assessing the development of the Terminus Virus."

Travis swiped his tablet.

"This is what they found waiting for them."

Again, the display depicted a photograph of cells taken at a magnified level only possible with an electron microscope. This time, however, rather than the Terminus viral cells that were so familiar to any mutant who had ever used the internet or browsed through a news hub, there were new virion particles that were alien to them. They were not dissimilar from Terminus, but there were distinct changes to the overall composition of the virus' structure. It was something new.

"What the hell is that?" Vascha asked.

"The Terminus Virus," Travis said, "But in the past decade or so it began a series of radical and rapid mutations that went completely undetected. It has altered it's structure so much that it is practically unrecognizable on a genetic level. This newest specimen has been named 'Ominous'. It is a strain of the Terminus Virus that chooses it's targets indiscriminately."

Travis looked up, no longer reading from his tablet, but now speaking directly to them.

"Simply put, ladies and gentlemen, it now attacks any human it can find. With the same results as its predecessor. It is no longer, as humans have been so fond of claiming over the years, a _mutant problem._"

Hunter heard a couple of muttered curses amongst the team as the information sunk in. Vascha rubbed her forehead roughly, as though a sudden pain had found itself wedged in her skull.

"Oh Christ..."

Travis paused for a long moment before continuing, the gravity of his words obviously weighing heavily on him.

"Thus far it has been detected only in a handful of regions throughout the world. Parts of South America, Southern Africa, and Eastern Europe. But it is spreading, and SHIELD has neither the manpower nor the influence to set up any sort of effective quarantine quietly without inciting hysteria. So far, the only thing working in our favor is that this new strain seems to have forgotten a few of Terminus' old tricks; It does not seem to spread as quickly or sterilize its victims with the same speed. It seems to have lost some of it's ability to jump easily from host to host. We're not sure why this radical change has occurred, but our attempts to simply round up known carriers have been fruitless. The damn thing just springs up elsewhere about a week later. And it's only a matter of time before Ominous remembers how to spread like wildfire the way it's cousin can. After that, we're looking at another global panic. Only this time, there won't be anyone to blame, or anyone to fight."

"Those evangelists who thought Terminus was sent from God to purge mutantkind are going to be pissed," Ciara observed, a humorless smile playing across her full lips.

"So where does Sinister come into all of this?" Vascha asked.

"We're just coming to that," Travis said, and looked down at his computer, queueing up new information to the holographic display.

A face appeared above the table that Hunter was unfamiliar with, but it was easy to assume who it was. Grim of features, with porcelain-white skin that seemed to be carved from some ghostly stone, his angular visage made all the more jarring by the bright red of his eyes and deep black of his hair. He was frowning in the three-dimensional photo, but something in his eyes hinted at some deep-seeded depravity and wickedness that Hunter could not readily define. Or perhaps he was only imagining it.

"Sinister," Ben said, confirming Hunter's suspicions. It was difficult to see this man besting Wolverine in combat. He could not say what he had expected, but this refined, ghostly-pale man was not what he had pictured in his head all these years when he tried to imagine Logan's final moments.

"His exact history is not completely known," Travis said, "But he is considered to be one of the first of the modern world's mutants. All we have been able to confirm is that he began his career in science as Dr. Nathaniel Essex in England, some time during the nineteenth century as an evolutionary theorist. It was partly his ideas that spawned the ill-conceived notions of eugenics and selective breeding in Nazi Germany. His mutations, poorly-documented as they are, seem to have given him the ability to extend his own life.

"He has remained a rather obscure dirty little secret amongst many of the world's governments over the past century or so. His intellect is such that it cannot be successfully measured by any standard that would apply to a normal human being. Genetics, engineering, theoretical physics, cloning... He has mastered all of them in one way or another. He's had an unofficial hand in just about every major scientific undertaking in the past hundred years, from the design of our first space-faring rockets, to the mapping of the human genome. Essex established himself as a sort of gun-for-hire in the science world, lending his expertise to any government or private organization that could pay him what he asked. He was even consulted on ways to cure or control the Terminus Virus."

"Are we supposed to kill him or thank him?" Gansükh asked, speaking for the first time.

"That's been the general attitude of many powerful organizations for several decades now," Travis admitted before continuing on. "When the Ominous strain of the Terminus Virus was deemed a species-wide threat by SHIELD, Essex was contacted to once again offer his expertise. What he proposed," Travis pressed down on his tablet and the holographs once again shimmered and shifted, "Was this."

For a moment, Hunter was not sure what he was looking at as the lasers did their magic, constructing a shape that hung in the air before them. For a fleeting moment, Hunter thought he was looking at some sort of amoeba or a strange kind of fish that he was not familiar with. But, slowly, as the image began to sharpen and the finer details became clear, he eyes began to find details that were not so alien. It was a ship. And not just any ship, but one of the largest air ships that Hunter had ever seen. The scale became even more astonishing when the hologram began to list the vital statistics of the craft, including maximum allowable occupancy.

_That can't be right, _Hunter thought, _that thing is the size of a small town._

"Once Essex determined that Ominous was beyond even his vast expertise, he presented SHIELD with what was to be considered a _Protocol: Black_ project. A last resort, if you will."

"A life raft?" Vascha asked, cocking an eyebrow.

"In so many words, yes," Travis replied, "Project Noah, as it was officially dubbed, was originally the next stage of design for SHEILD's Helicarrier."

Travis pressed several areas on his glass screen and the holograph of the gigantic ship began to peel away layer by layer, showing the underlying architecture and key systems of the vessel, certain areas highlighting as Travis spoke of them.

"At the outset, the ship was intended to be a sort of mobile governing body. Not just a glorified military vessel like the Helicarrier, this ship would have been able to comfortably accommodate several hundred thousand men, women, children, even a limited amount of natural flora and fauna to help facilitate the miniaturized ecosystem, most prominently displayed on the primary deck of the ship, overlooked by the main bridge."

A section of the craft's bulbous dome lifted away and showed a simplistic representation of a carefully-planned and maintained parkway housed within the ship itself. It was complete with beds of grass, several varieties of young tree, and even a shallow-looking river that flowed from one small pool to another. Even though it took up only a small section of the ship, if the dimensions that hovered in the air next to the hologram were to be believed, the picturesque park was still many thousands of square feet in area.

"It was meant to be the first stepping stone towards reestablishing the United States as a global power by placing the seat of government and culture within a secure, impenetrable, and completely mobile environment. It is almost completely self-sustaining in every way. Even it's repulsor engines and nuclear reactors are amongst the cleanest and most efficient power sources mankind has yet produced. SHIELD has nearly emptied it's international financial holdings to see the project through."

Travis touched his tablet, and slowly, small sections of the holographic ship began to shift and change, as though being rebuilt or replaced by invisible hands.

"Essex proposed that the vessel be redesigned to serve the function of, as Vascha put it, a lifeboat. It was made more defensible, additions were made to give the vessel limited space and sea-faring capability if needed, and more emphasis was placed on it's ability to sustain a population without outside assistance. He also added a sophisticated genetic laboratory to the design, and maintained that, while curing Ominous might have been a goal that was, at this time, out of our reach, we could still safeguard a small portion of humanity from the virus, while at the same time continuing research that might one day bring about a solution. He was given _carte blanche_ on the project, and it was eventually placed entirely in his hands while SHIELD began making preparations for the eventual migration of a diverse selection of humanity's genetic pool onto the vessel."

Travis paused and gave a long sigh, taking a moment to rub his eyes, as much out of fatigue as frustration.

"Hindsight being what it is, we put too much faith in him. We didn't have the manpower or resources to keep our own cooks in the kitchen, as it were. We're stretched thin enough simply trying to keep many parts of the world from tearing apart at the seams, and Essex managed to phase many of our scientists out of the project and replace them with his own. Several months ago, we started receiving disturbing reports that Essex was using the facilities that were placed at his disposal to conduct genetic research and cloning experiments. We were told that he was shipping in mutants that had been captured and placed in stasis in the interest of using their genetic material to produce some kind of clone soldier. We didn't react to the news immediately because every scientist or officer that was still on the project and reported directly to us would promptly redact their reports when we made contact with them to seek an explanation. We assumed that many of our people were simply nervous or paranoid about working with a mutant. We only too late discovered that those same men and women were being bribed or threatened into silence by Essex. Then, just over five days ago, the entire facility that housed the Noah Project went dark. No contact whatsoever."

Travis pressed down on his personal computer, and the holograph flickered, shifting to a two-dimensional vid-screen that hung suspended in the air.

"Ninety-four hours ago, we received this."

On the screen, Sinister sat in a large, black leather chair, his arms resting at his sides with his fingers steepled beneath his chin. Dark as the lighting around him was, he seemed to glow with an inner radiance, as though his skin was a luminous white vapor that only took the shape of a man. When he spoke, his voice was both silk and sandpaper, seeming to emit several different pitches and tones at the same time. It was an otherworldly timbre that made the hairs on the back of Hunter's neck stand up. He looked to his side and saw that Rin had gone almost completely rigid, apparently as disturbed as he was by the strange tone of the man's speech.

"Members of SHIELD, and what few paltry excuses for governments lap at their heels, I am Mister Sinister. And it is with great pleasure that I inform you that Project Noah has been a complete and thorough success. Not, however, by your own standards I'm afraid. No, in that respect, you're rather likely to find yourself disappointed in the next few moments."

The image changed. On the screen, men in identical dark exo-skeletal combat suits were carrying bodies and heaving them into a pile. Though the camera was clearly placed in the hands of someone who was unfamiliar with filming, and the image was blurred and, at times, shaky, they could see vague indications of flames somewhere in the background. As the camera panned out, Hunter found that he could barely count the sheer number of corpses that filled the screen like a small mountain of bone and flesh. Hundreds, maybe thousands of faces stared out from the heap in various states of ruin. Mouths hung agape, eyes stared blankly in death, and dark, stagnant blood trickled like dozens of tiny streams. Sinister's voice continued on over the macabre display.

"As you can see, those dedicated souls who worked tirelessly to see this project to it's fruition have come to the end of their usefulness to me. As have you. The Ark is now operates under my sole authority.

"I'm sure you're wondering two things by this point. One: How you could have been so foolish to put so much faith in a man such as I. You needn't trouble yourselves, dear ladies and gentlemen. This chain of events was set into motion before many of you could even read. Two: What course of action you might enact to take back what you believe to be yours. Your precious ship. The answer is none, for reasons that will become all the more clear in a matter of moments."

The image on the screen changed back to Sinister, who still sat in his large chair, his perched fingers motionless as he spoke.

"The Ark is now mine. I have at my disposal nearly one hundred of the finest soldiers that modern science can create, and that number continues to grow even as I speak. I have the weapons systems of the entire facility, not to mention the offensive capabilities of the ship itself. Within the ship's computers I have the complete informational database of SHIELD and it's subsidiary operations. And you? You have nothing. I am aware of every conceivable countermeasure that you have at your command, and both you and I know that none of them stand a chance if you wish at all to preserve the vast resources that you have poured into this project."

For the first time, Sinister shifted in his seat, taking a more leisurely posture as he reclined back into the chair, languidly resting his head in a white hand.

"No doubt you are now anticipating a ransom. Some sort of list of demands. As it happens, I do have several requests to make of you. Firstly, you will make no attempt to take back control of The Ark. If you fail to comply, I will unleash The Ark's compliment of thermonuclear ordinance at random throughout the entirety of North America, concentrating on the most highly populated areas in Canada and Mexico, as well as the Western coastline of the former United States. I will make no effort to conceal the origin of the weapons, and the blame will be affixed to SHIELD. Second, you are no doubt aware of the fact that The Ark cannot embark without the combined launch codes held in the possession of myself and several SHIELD officers and scientists. I could, of course, creatively reset the ship's onboard computers, but I don't believe that necessary. Nor do you, I imagine. You will relinquish these codes no later than one week from today."

Travis paused the video and regarded the team, answering the question that they all had on their mind.

"What he's referring to about the codes is what's called a Dusk Reset. Sinister cannot access The Ark's core systems or take off without the consent of SHIELD. However, if the holders of the codes were to suddenly die all within moments of each other, sole authority over The Ark will fall to Sinister. It's an old holdover protocol from SHIELD's involvement in the cold war that was never phased out. We have no reason to assume that Sinister would make such a threat unless he knew exactly how he would carry it out. We can only assume that this was not his first course of action because, in the case of a Dusk Reset, nuclear capabilities of The Ark are suspended for forty-two hours, which would leave him in a weakened bargaining position, if not necessarily vulnerable."

"You can't lock Sinister out of the system?" Rin asked, her soft voice nearly lost in the ambient hum of the transport's engines coming from the walls around them.

"That was the first thing we tried," Travis admitted, "But unfortunately, most of the scientists that were most familiar with those parameters were among those killed by Sinister. It would seem to be another aspect of this charade that he planned for. We've been working on it night and day, but there's not much hope that we'll be able to crack the firewalls in time."

"Exactly what are the offensive capabilities of The Ark?" Vascha asked.

Travis pressed a button and the image of the ship returned, it's weapons systems highlighted in orange as Travis pointed to them.

"One-hundred and eight side-mounted railgun turrets, twenty-eight particle-accelerator cannons on the deck and belly of the vessel, and a fleet of seventy Hell Falcon air-assault drones, not to mention the materials to suitably arm several thousand soldiers. The Ark also houses a battery of missiles and warheads including fifty disruption field micro-nukes."

Gansükh whistled long and low.

"Jesus..." Hunter hissed. He couldn't even imagine that kind of firepower, let alone in the hands one person.

"What's the yield on just one of those nukes?" Ben asked.

Travis made a face as though doing sums in his head. "The micro-nukes were designed to be more or less powerful depending on where they're dropped. The disruption field that it emits grows stronger as it eats up more matter, allowing the field of destruction to increase with a maximum effective radius of about ten square miles. It was originally called a 'clean' nuke because of it's relatively low level of trace radiation, but our scientists found that name somewhat misleading. Ten square miles of leveled city isn't any 'cleaner' than ten square miles of_ irradiated_ leveled city. The real kicker is that the modules they've been housed in are stealth capable. If he decides to launch one, we'll have absolutely no chance of warning the targeted population."

Travis turned his attention back to the hologram. The vid screen of Sinister returned, and the recording began to play again.

"...Third, and this is the most important, ladies and gentlemen, as it is intended for every human on the planet, and I do hope that you relay the message."

Sinister stood and approached the camera, his ghost white face filling up the screen, his ruby-like eyes burning as his brow tightened and furrowed, creating scores of lines in his pale skin.

"Crawl into a hole... And die. This ship is yours no longer. And very soon, this world will be yours no longer. So please, take the path of least resistance, and go find whatever place you might deem suitable to curl up and wither away. Remember, you have one week, or face a world engulfed in flames. _Mutatio aeternum_."

The screen flickered and went dark.

Hunter quickly searched his memory. Madam Yuriko had challenged them to learn many languages during their time in her estate, and Latin was one of the easiest they had been charged with.

_Mutatio aeternum_... _Change forever._ It was not an unsuitable slogan for Sinister, he decided.

Vascha sat back in her chair and visibly deflated slightly. She looked at Travis. "Shit, Travis, here I was thinking you had us here to do something difficult. This? This is going to be a cakewalk. Hell, you might as well send half of us home. Six soldiers against only a hundred or so would seem unfair to them."

"I didn't say it was going be easy," Travis said, "And we do have a plan designed specifically around your abilities and what we know about your training under Logan, based on data from your past operations."

"Oh, good," Ben quipped, "And here I thought you we going to just throw us out of a plane right on his head."

There was a long pause, and Travis made a face. Then it clicked for them.

"You're fucking kidding, right?" Ciara demanded, leaning forward in her chair, looking as though she was ready to pounce on the young agent.

"We'll go over the details presently if you'll kindly calm down," Travis snapped, trying to regain some control over the briefing, "We respect your expertise in covert operations. All I ask is that you respect ours. We've been dealing with sociopaths like this since World War II."

Travis pressed his tablet and the floating image of Sinister's face returned to the air above the table. He pointed to it.

"You want him? There he is. If he gains control of The Ark, you had better believe that you won't ever be able to get near him again. Nobody ever said that this would be easy, or that it would come without risks. We called on you because you're the best. Your team has single-handedly stopped the genetic cleansing perpetrated by the warlords of South America. You destroyed the Sentinel production facilities in Africa. You liberated hundreds, maybe thousands of mutants from interment camps over the years. You've neutralized countless terrorists both human and mutant. And now you're balking because this might be _dangerous_?"

They were quiet then for several seconds. Hunter wanted to add that Logan had been instrumental in nearly all of the operations that Travis had just mentioned, but he thought better of it. No doubt the rest of the team was thinking the exact same thing.

"So," Vascha said finally, "What is the plan, exactly?"

Travis wasted no time, returning his attention back to his glass computer, touching several areas and bringing up a new hologram that animated his words with crude wire-frame drawings and lights representing the team, the environment, and potential threats.

"In order to gain access to the facility, you will HALO jump from 40,000 feet above The Ark facility in New Mexico using the latest in rapid descent gear. Zephyr," Travis looked at Hunter, "Will use his wind-manipulation to bring you as close to the grounds as possible without attracting attention. You will enter from the Northeast sector here."

The holograph seemed to explode with detail as a three-dimensional map of the The Ark and it's outlying facilities and buildings were described in wire frame. Six dots blinked at the Northeast corner and began to move towards the The Ark.

"Once you have gained access, you will make your way onto the ship, avoiding detection and maintaining a silent operation at all costs. The main element that is working to our advantage here is size. Even with one hundred of those clone soldiers, Sinister cannot possibly hope to patrol or monitor every area of the ship, and we can assume that there will be only minimal resistance in gaining access. When you're inside, you will split into two groups. Group Alpha: Ambush, Echo, and Zephyr, and Group Bravo: Black, Espen, and Aretz."

Hunter stole a glance as Vascha, and she returned his gaze with a noncommittal shrug, giving nothing of her actual feelings away.

_Their intelligence _is_ good_, Hunter thought. Those were the teams that they normally split into when their missions had been planned by Logan. Together, Rin, Gansükh, and he made a rather effective if unusual sniping team, with Gansükh as the shooter, Rin using her echolocation as a spotter, and he using his manipulation of air currents to ensure that Gan's shots were unimpeded by rotten wind. Vascha, Ciara, and Ben made for an effective ground assault force, using a combination of stealth and brute force to achieve their goals.

"Here's where it gets tricky," Travis warned, "Our intelligence, based on heat signatures and data monitoring, confirms that Sinister has taken residence in the science labs of The Ark, located here, where he will surely be housing the majority of his force. Trying to force entry there and take him out would have no hope of succeeding. So, our plan is to draw him out into the open. Specifically, here."

Once again, they were treated to an exploded view of the massive ship, the dome and several sections of the armored layers cutting away to show the parkway beneath.

"In order to access the main systems of the ship, Sinister will have to leave the science wing and make his way to the main bridge. The most efficient path between those points will lead him through the parkway into the open, where he will be vulnerable to attack."

"How will you draw him out?" Rin asked.

"Well," Travis replied, "We're going to give him what he wants."

For a moment, no one understood.

"The codes," Vascha realized, "You're going to give him his launch codes."

"Yes. Once you confirm that you are in position, we will contact Sinister and give him full control over The Ark. After that, he will have no choice but to proceed to the bridge, through the parkway, in order to put them into effect and begin his launch sequence."

Two areas of the holographic ship were highlighted. One at the top of a small observational tower that offered nearly a full, unobstructed view of the entire parkway, and one near the base of the column that jutted up from the far end, where the bridge was situated, not unlike the command deck of an aircraft carrier.

"Group Alpha will take position at the weather tower, where Ambush will be tasked with attempting a single-shot kill on Sinister. Group Bravo will coordinate with Alpha's efforts and attempt to impede and disrupt any escort that he may have, and potentially be called upon to neutralize Sinister if Ambush's attack should fail."

"It won't," Gansükh said testily.

"But if-"

"It _won't_."

Travis sighed and nodded concession, "Alright, then Group Bravo will also be tasked with congratulating you."

He turned his attention back to the hologram.

"You timing will have to be precise. We can't _fake_ the transmission of the codes, so once we send that data, it's all on you. If you fail, there will be nothing standing between him and full use of The Ark. It's not a watertight plan on our part. We're putting all of our chips on you, but we literally have no other options."

"No pressure or anything," Gansükh smiled, and the rest chuckled lightly, appreciating the brief levity.

"What's the extraction plan?" Ben asked.

For the first time in awhile, Travis' smile came unforced, with something close to authenticity.

"That," he said swelling slightly with measured pride, "Is where it gets cool."

The holograph changed again, and they now saw a complex set of designs for what looked like some sort of harness. The image moved as they computer displayed how the unusual apparatus fit onto a human figure. It didn't look entirely dissimilar from any other type of combat harness that Hunter had ever seen, but there was too much unfamiliar hardware on it for him to make any sense of what he was seeing.

"We've named them CHBs, or Come Home Belts. They've only just come into active use. You're looking at one of the first authentic military-grade personal teleportation devices. You'll each wear one, and when your operation is complete, all you have to do is press a button, and you'll be transported back to the Helicarrier."

"Why the Helicarrier?" Ciara asked, "Why can't we just go the hell home?"

"Better yet," Hunter said, "Just teleport us right in there."

"That's part of the limit of the technology as it stands right now, I'm afraid," Travis admitted, "The device has to home in onto a very specific spatial frequency in order to work. So, as of right now, we can't send people anywhere, only bring them back. Think of it like stretching a rubber band between two points. If you let one end go, it can only travel in the direction that it's still being held down. The belt is a link to the hub on the Helicarrier. It is not in and of itself the transport device, just something for us to lock onto when you want to come back. I don't understand all the physics myself, but we've run over three-hundred successful combat operations using it. It works.

"The only other catch," he said, "Is that the transmission emitter uses a hell of a lot of power, and the battery pack has to be carried around. Luckily, only one person per group needs to have one. That person flips a switch, that group goes home."

There was a beeping noise, and the hologram came to a halt. Travis looked at the door as it opened and a SHIELD solder stepped through, dressed in flightsuit and helmet.

"Agent Travis," the soldier said, "We're approaching the Helicarrier."

The soldier closed the door without another word, and Travis looked at the team.

"We'll go over the finer points of the operation on the Helicarrier," he said, "But for right now, I'm obligated to ask you officially: Do you accept this mission?"

They looked at each other in turn. There was no need for discussion.

"Like I told you before, Travis," Vascha said, standing and idly thumbing the hilt of Logan's adamantium claw that rested on her hip, "Point us in the right direction, and Sinister dies."


	11. Sleeping Giants

_**Readers,**_

_**You'll start to notice as the story goes on that my version of Mister Sinister may differ slightly from what you may be familiar with. Still a massive threat, to be sure, but I've tweaked him to fit in the Evolution universe as well as my own personal needs. Not to worry. He's still every bit as diabolical and dangerous as you're expecting.**_

_**Hori out.**_

There was not much in the entirety of the world that could rattle Laura Kinney. Not after all she had endured in her long life. At times it felt as though her emotional senses were as dull as her claws were sharp. Violence, death, blood, all the horrors of the world inspired almost nothing in her. She supposed that was what allowed her to keep working with Sinister and his ilk. Be it Gorgeous George's foul and lecherous disposition, Hairbag's wanton lust for inflicting pain, or Ramrod's simple and honest cruelty, she could shrug it off and move on. Even Sinister, whom she had witnessed orchestrating more kinds of pain than even she had imagined existed, conjured little more in her than a casual sort of caution.

The science wing of The Ark, however, managed to send a cold rush down her spine on almost a daily basis. In particular, the stasis chambers.

She did not like venturing there, but with Sinister spending almost every waking moment in it's depths testing this or observing that, she was often compelled to be at his side more often than she would have ever liked.

She passed a hand over a console, and the large doors before her hissed open, greeting her with a rush of freezing air that caused her to tighten her jaw as she walked forward into the long, sterile corridor, a thin sheen of frost crunching underfoot as she went. When the science wing had been occupied by the many scientists that now lay dead and burning outside in the facility's main causeway, they had worn thick hooded jackets and mittens, lined with synthetic fur to combat the below-freezing temperatures. Laura did not have to take such precautions. The same healing factor that had kept Wolverine young and resilient all those years flowed through her veins as well, and she could practically feel the rush in her still-young body's core as it's internal mechanisms fought against the cold. And won.

The corridor opened up suddenly, and she felt the massive size of the chamber all around her, though she neglected to look anywhere besides the ground in front of her feet. Above her and to either side were thousands upon thousands of man-sized pods, like bulbous white coffins, the vast majority of which hummed dully with the power that kept their life support systems cranking away. Not that these pods needed much power. It didn't take much to keep a body alive and in suspended animation. Even a mutant body.

Much as she tried to reason with herself, to steel herself against the odd sensation of dread that she felt each time she entered the science wing, she could not conquer the childlike rush of anxiety that gripped her as she advanced. It was like taking a stroll through a living morgue, eyes peering out from the pods, half-lidded and lifeless, like the accusing stares of vengeful wraiths. She had made the mistake the first time of inspecting several of the pods out of sheer, morbid curiosity, and had found more familiar faces beneath the frosted plates of glass than she would have imagined. The feelings of horror and guilt would not leave her, much to her own consternation.

_They're as good as dead_, she reasoned with herself, _No reason to get upset._

Part of it, she accepted, was due to her own experiences as a lab rat in the revived Weapon X program all those many decades ago. The cold, unfeeling nature of the facility, the sterile look of the white and gunmetal materials that adorned and made up the many rooms, the brutal, awful efficiency of it all. In a way, it had been rather cathartic to put all those scientists to the blade in the day-long massacre that Sinister had ordered. Every life that ended, every pair of eyes that flickered as death overtook them, was a small payback to the doctors that had made her what she was.

The feeling of elation did not last, as she knew it wouldn't. And her loathing and aversion for any facility that smacked of science and mutant experimentation and imprisonment would not be abated.

"Dwelling on the past again, are we, Laura?"

Laura snapped her head around and beheld Sinister. The deep cold and smell of chemicals in the chamber had masked his unnatural scent, and she was surprised to find him so close by without her noticing. Like her, he had no use for additional clothing to defend his body from the lethal chill. He wore a suit of fine black silk, pinstriped with single threads of red, and a black shirt and tie. Over that, a white lab coat outfitted with several medical devices designed for inspecting and evaluating the pods and their inhabitants. He spent a great deal of his time doing that now. She noted that his shoulders and his feet, clad in black leather shoes, were almost glistening with frost, practically frozen solid from his long hours spent there.

"You're not a psychic," Laura replied testily. She hated it when Sinister seemed to know what went on in her mind.

"Not yet," Sinister said mildly, paying only the slightest attention to her as he went to work on a pod, plugging his personal tablet into it's interface and reading the information that appeared on the glass screen.

Sinister let out a light chuckle as he regarded the data, and Laura felt hairs stand up on the back of her neck. She couldn't help but notice that his breath, somehow, did not frost when he exhaled. It was... unsettling.

"I knew I'd find you," Sinister said to the pod, reaching out and wiping the frosted glass to see inside. For the first time, Laura took note of how large the pod was. Definitely not a standard size.

"There are only so many men that would need a tank of these dimensions," Sinister said, entering information onto his tablet as he spoke to the pod in a manner akin to an adult admonishing a child "But it still wasn't easy to track you down in all this clutter, Mr. Marko."

Laura cocked an eyebrow. Why did that name sound familiar?

Again, almost as though he could read her thoughts, Sinister looked at Laura and gestured towards the pod, a cold, emotionless smile on his white face.

"Cain Marko," he said.

Laura couldn't hide her surprise. A fact that Sinister seemed to enjoy.

"Yes," he said, "The Juggernaut. Still alive after all these years. Not so surprising, really. He's spent the majority of the last five decades or so in some form of stasis or another, being shipped her and there. It's bound to keep a man young for a while," Sinister looked down at his tablet and made a _tsk tsk'_ing noise, "But such a long time, there's been massive damage to many of his internal organs."

"Another minion you want corked?" Laura asked, idly wiping the forming frost from the tanned skin of her bare arms. Sinister had found Hairbag, Ramrod, and George all in a similar manner. Their subsequent freedom was part of what kept them in Sinister's employ. That and the killing they got to do.

Sinister gave her a look as though she had grown another head. "Him? Of course, not, child. He's a criminal. A monster."

Laura balked. "Explain to me how that's different from... Any of us?"

Sinister was back to his usual routine of barely paying attention to her, his eyes now fixed back onto the data on his tablet, which he idly thumbed through with swipes of his white fingers.

"Because he's not a mutant, just a freak accident of... magic, science, whatever you want to call it," he said mildly, "And has no place in the future I'm building. You and the Nasty Boys have a role to play. You have something to contribute despite your lack of... refinement. And he does not."

He disconnected his personal computer from the pod and walked around to the side of the large containment unit. Laura took the opportunity to stand on her toes to look in. A massive, chiseled face greeted her, pale and dewey from decades of continuous stasis. His eyes were half-closed as so many of the others were, and his pupils stared, large and dark and lifeless. He was younger-looking than she would have expected, but she supposed stasis, like her own healing factor, could retard the steps of time as Sinister had said. Even after years of atrophy, his limp neck and shoulders bulged with muscle and promises of unrelenting strength. She was about to ask Sinister why he would bother looking for Marko when he didn't plan on freeing him or using him for some ghastly experiment when she heard him speak.

"_Au revoir, _Mr. Marko."

The pod gave a sudden jolt that surprised Laura enough to take a step back from it. She tilted her head and saw Sinister as he finished tearing the umbilical of life support cables that jutted from the side of the unit with one pull of his powerful arm. Embryonic liquid sprayed from the pod like blue blood from a gaping wound.

"What are you doing?" Laura asked, trying to hide the inexplicable alarm she felt.

"I told you," he said, dropping the mess of tangled cables that still sputtered fluids to the ground, "He has no place here."

Inside, she could see Marko's face begin to twitch and spasm as the technology that kept his limp body alive slowly gave out. A wave of alarms began to emit from the pod, and a holographic screen sprang to life beside it, displaying the mass of critical errors that resulted from the damage Sinister had done. A rapid beeping began as a monitor showed the giant man's heart struggle to return life to the dying body that housed it. He was quickly going into cardiac arrest.

It was all Laura could to do mask her disgust. Though she had done her fair share of executions, the idea of killing a man as he slept disquieted her.

The beeps turned into one long drone as Marko's heart finally gave out, and the man's body slumped forward, limp and heavy against the glass of the pod. The legendary unstoppable Juggernaut was dead.

Sinister regarded the pod for a long moment, a strange expression on his face that Laura could not readily identify. Something between mirth and satisfaction. Abruptly, he turned to face her, wiping the fluid from his hand onto his lab coat even as it froze on his skin.

"Did you need something, Laura?"

Laura began to remember herself then, her usual frigid and unsympathetic demeanor wrapping her up like a rough blanket against any scrutiny. She looked at the pod and then at Sinister with a practiced and calculated disinterest.

"SHIELD sent a message," she said, "They claim they're going to give in to your demands."

Sinister's eyes widened, and it seemed for a moment as though he might slap her there and then. "Why didn't you tell me as soon as you got down here, girl?"

Laura rolled her eyes, "Because it's bullshit, Essex. They'd never hand you the reins just like that. I don't even know why you're taking the time to deal with them at all."

He glared at her, one corner of his lip twitching, threatening to transform into an outright scowl. "If you were any other woman-"

"I'd be half as intelligent and even more useless to you than those goons upstairs," she challenged, referring to Sinister's 'Nasty Boys' as he had taken to calling them. "Don't get yourself all twisted up, Essex, they haven't even sent the codes yet, just implied that they will. You know they're going to have some bullcrap terms for their release to you, if they're even throwing straight dice here. This is SHIELD we're talking about, after all."

Sinister inhaled through he nose, long and deep, Laura once again taking note that his breath did not frost as hers did as he exhaled. Of all the things about Sinister that could disturb you, that was one of the strangest.

_I could end this insanity right here_, she thought, regarding the strange, unnatural man, feeling the claws in one forearm twitch slightly at the idea, _End this right now._

She felt her muscles relax. She had had this debate with herself before and she knew it was folly. She had witnessed Logan's defeat, and had no reason to suppose that she would fare any better. Besides, Sinister had still yet to make good on his many promises to her, and his being dead wouldn't rectify that by any means.

Sinister seemed to relax as well, that familiar half smile returning to his face as he looked her up and down, some geniality coming back to him.

"One day, Laura," he said pleasantly, "That mouth is going to take you into dangerous ground that those lovely features won't be able to back you out of."

"My whole life is dangerous ground."

He laughed at that, the noise echoing through the chamber, and Laura was once again reminded of the hundreds of dead eyes that looked at her from the endless number of pods that stretched into the cold darkness as the sound bounced off of them. She fought a shiver.

Sinister began to walk down the corridor leading to the exit. At the same time, two of his troopers entered from the sliding door Laura had used. They approached at a brisk clip, in perfect synchronicity, their masked faces making them look more like ants that walked erect than men. Laura still hadn't gotten used to their smell. It was blood and placenta and medical equipment and armor. She wrinkled her nose at them and fought a primal urge to growl.

"Dispose of that," Sinister said, pointing at the darkened pod where Cain Marko had once slept. The troopers passed by them, barely even acknowledging that the man had spoken, but seeing about their task all the same.

"Essex, what are you even planning to do with all of them?" Laura asked, stealing one last glance at the pods before they were obscured from her vision by the walls and ceiling of the narrow corridor they had entered. He did not offer an answer until they were well beyond the freezing corridors of the stasis chamber, and for a while, Laura had assumed he hadn't heard her.

"We're going to build a new world," Sinister said finally. He often talked like that when discussing his grand designs. It was one of his more irritating features. Laura decided not to press the issue.

"And please, girl, for the last time, call me by my true name."

Laura shook her head irritably, "I feel like an idiot calling you by an adjective. What's so significant about it that you _have _to be called 'Sinister'?"

Again, a long pause came before Sinister answered. They had made their way onto The Ark's express lift before he spoke at all. The doors of the lift clicked shut, and they began to ascend to the upper levels of the ship to the communication deck.

"It was what my human wife called me," he said without any hint of emotion, "Before I killed her."

She felt his gaze burning on her as the lift carried them upward, and she finally turned to return his stare.

"You rather remind me of her," he smiled.

Laura gave no hint of reaction. After all, there was not much in the world that could rattle Laura Kinney.


	12. Smoke and Mirrors

_**UPDATE: Well, this is really cool. A friend of mine that I've worked with in the past read Sons of Logan and sent me a couple of quick character sketches that he did for fun. They're of Vascha and a Genome Trooper, and you can see them by searching 'sonsoflogan' on photobucket. When he asked if he should do more, I gave him a definitive 'Hell yeah!' I want to see his sketches for the whole team! (PS: Leave it to a comic book artist to draw a chain smoking Russian assassin as a stone-cold fox! Haha)  
><strong>_

_**Hello readers,**_

_**Not too far now before the insanity starts. I know I keep saying that, but it's really true. A lot of the delays on new chapters are stemming from the large amount of planning that goes into narrating a battle sequence while shifting between the points of view of six different characters.**_

_**There's some exciting news to be had regarding the Sons of Logan. Refer to my other updated story to see what I mean. It's submission time again, folks.**_

_**Hori out.**_

_**The Helicarrier. Somewhere over the California coastline.**_

"Ladies and gentlemen, I am General Johann Cole of SHIELD, director of this operation. This is the war room of my ship, the Helicarrier _S.S. Fury_. And you are criminal mercenaries, wanted in connection with dozens of war crimes."

Vascha exchanged glances with the rest of the team at that last sentence. Thus far, their reception on the massive ship suspended impossibly in the air over the western coast of the former United States had been... not warm, but not nearly as hostile as she had expected. Officers and soldiers and even some scientists in white lab coats had stopped and saluted Agent Travis as he escorted them deeper and deeper into the Helicarrier's bowels after they had docked their transport, only giving the six mutants the followed a cursory glance, more out of curiosity than anything else. Several times, Vascha had caught the fleeting whispers of SHIELD personnel as they passed by, and most revealed a measure of awe rather than animosity. One had even been foolish enough to poke his comrade in the ribs, point at the team as they passed and ask, "Are those X-Men?"

She would never confess to it, but Vascha had felt a small measure of pride swell within her at the admittedly confused and ill-informed comparison. She dismissed it almost instantly, though. They were, of course, not X-Men. They were not guardians or protectors. They defended no cause, and flew no banners of black 'X's over red and yellow fields of color. They were soldiers. Killers, even. And Vascha never allowed herself to forget that.

The upper levels of the Helicarrier had been much as Vascha had expected. Harsh, cold, utilitarian, industrial, much like the inner workings of a submarine or a battleship, miles upon miles of pipes and wiring and vents stuffed into every conceivable corner and bulkhead, the edges of walls and walkways rough and unpolished, the welds that held them in place exposed and still black with carbon. The effect was claustrophobic to say the least.

As they descended, however, the walkways opened up and began to smooth out in their design. Where once the floor they had walked on was a thick grate of steel, there was now smooth grey plastic and carbon-fiber panels riveted to supports. The walls and ceiling were now uniform and even, with cool blue lighting fixed at repeating intervals. As they descended even further, now using lifts rather than long sets of stairs, there was even thin carpet and the occasional plaque or piece of art hanging on the wall. If not for the ever-present drone of the craft's massive engines, one could almost forget that they were suspended tens of thousands of feet above seas level. Well, if you weren't Ben in any case, who still grimaced every so often at the feeling of separation from the earth that Vascha knew must be a constant irritation to him

By the time they had reached the Helicarrier's war room, Vascha had begun to feel slightly more optimistic about the difficulty she had anticipated in dealing with SHIELD's higher-ups. Travis had been easy enough to get along with, but he was merely a SHIELD Agent. While that was certainly nothing to sniff at in the organization's hierarchy, Vascha knew that they would eventually have to deal with someone from the top brass.

She had not been expecting to be brought face to face with _the_ top brass.

She could practically feel the temperature drop as they filed into the war room. General Cole stood at rested attention at the head of a long table, small dark eyes peering out at them from beneath a square-shaped brow as they entered. He was a severe, rigidly built man. Older, but with none of the paunchy softness that took over the midsection of many other men in his age bracket. His relaxed arms were still leanly muscled like cords of hard wood, and the sheen of silvery hair that covered them seemed to only add to his intimidating stature, rather than detract from it. His square, leathery jaw was shaved to a shiny closeness that came from many years of daily military grooming. His head had received a similar treatment, and shone dully under the dim lights. His uniform, the gunmetal military fatigues of SHIELD officers, was neatly pressed and stiff, the left breast adorned with dozens of small, modestly-designed marks of distinction.

Travis had motioned for them to sit, then exchanged several whispered sentences with General Cole before excusing himself from the room. Then Cole had introduced himself with his brusque and accusatory words, and Vascha knew they were in for some military-style ball breaking. She silently cursed.

"I know that you're familiar with our situation, and the role you've been asked to fill in helping us to resolve it," the General continued, "And shortly you'll be familiarized with the finer details of the operation. But first, I wanted to make my stance on your involvement as crystal clear as possible."

_Here we go._

"It has never been a policy of mine to employ mercenaries," he said, "I prefer to work with men I know. Soldiers fighting towards a common goal, who understand concepts like 'orders' and 'chain of command.' You are soldiers of a different sort. Whatever your view may be on your previous endeavors, make no mistake, you are now military contractors being paid for your services. But, in my experience, loyalty that needs to be paid for is no loyalty at all."

Vascha wished, not for the first or last time she reckoned, that she was a telepath. She wished she could give the others on the team some signal, some invisible gesture that would calm them, and help them to keep their growing resentment for this man to themselves, but alas, she could not do so without drawing Cole's attention to the fact that such a gesture was necessary at all. She could do nothing to stop Ciara from opening her mouth and speaking her mind, as she was want to do.

"This coming from SHIELD," she said, "An organization so 'loyal' you completely disappeared when America was on the brink of collapse."

Cole glared at Ciara a moment, obviously not used to being interrupted. He worked his jaw for a moment, as though chewing a piece of gristle.

"Ciara Monetti," he said, "The back-alley brawler turned child soldier. On the subject of loyalty, young lady, how is your mother? It's been some time since you've spoken to her, I gather."

Telepath or no, Vascha knew what was coming, and jumped out of her seat an instant before Ciara left hers, managing to put two hands on the girl's shoulders, pressing hard into tanned skin with black fingertips. Ciara was the stronger, and could have tossed Vascha aside like a ragdoll is she desired, but her comrade's touch soothed her for the moment. She let out a low, ursine growl and returned to her seat. Vascha could feel the girl's muscles in her shoulder and neck twitch and ripple as Ciara struggled to keep calm.

"_Spokoĭstvie_, Ciara," Vascha whispered before letting go and slowly returning to her own seat. _Calm._

General Cole frowned. "Undisciplined," he muttered.

"Let us cut the bullshit," Vascha snapped, growing tired of the man's attitude almost as quickly as Ciara, her Russian accent thickening slightly in her annoyance, "We don't have any more illusions about this than you do, General. You have a bear in a cave, and you want some dogs to go and get him out. That's fine. We needn't dress it up. But don't presume to think that you _know_ us based on what some analyst has put together for you in file."

"Ms. Aleksandrov," Cole replied, "I've accepted that we require your... unique talents to carry out this mission quickly and efficiently. I can even accept that what you'll be doing out there sets off a shit-ton of alarms with my own personal moral compass. Assassination is one of the most cowardly of military weapons, procuring some glorified guns-for-hire to do the job for you notwithstanding. What I can't accept is your strolling onto my ship expecting me to hand you the keys to the car without a little bit of respect on your part. Trust me, I know all I want or need to know about you."

"You called us," Benjamin pointed out, "You need us."

Cole snorted, "Son, I _need _the X-Men. I _need_ Wolverine. But here I am, stuck with you; Logan's private cult of murderers. You are, as Ms. Aleksandrov put so eloquently, trained dogs. Trained dogs that, quite frankly, have a history of attacking the same people you're now being asked to assist. In SHIELD's entire history of dealing with mutants, we've had more turncoats, double-agents, and outright frauds than I care to count."

"You think that we're going to go over to Sinister's side?" Hunter asked, barely able to mask his outrage, "The man who ki-"

"Killed your _master_, I'm aware," Cole finished, waving a hand as though the gravity of the statement was a paltry, nebulous thing. "I don't have the patience for your bastardized samurai code, or whatever it is that Logan poured into your heads, son."

Cole finally sat down at the head of the table, folding his hands together and leaning towards them. He spoke with anger and frustration, that was clear enough to Vascha to see. But it was not the white, hot anger that plagued so many soldiers, herself included. It was cool, collected, focused, and that much more threatening.

"Simply put, by your very nature, you're dangerous," Cole said, "Your personal histories aside, mutants haven't done themselves any favors in the last few decades to win the hearts and mind of normal humans, including myself and many of my colleagues. I won't defend what was done by our side, but we did what was necessary to preserve human life at all costs. Which is exactly what we're doing right now. What is _necessary_. What is required of us by honor and duty, whether I agree with it or not."

Vascha's memories flashed back to her years a child. A pre-teen girl, spending every waking moment scared for her very life in a mutant internment camp, her parents dead at the hands of the military unit that had broken into their home to detain Vascha.

They had protested with the soldiers when they came to take her, then they had yelled, then they had fought, and then they had died, and Vascha was taken all the same. She remembered the weight of the inhibitor collar that had been affixed around her thin neck. She remembered the scuttling of the rats that shared her tiny cell with her. She remembered the screams, her own and those of her fellow detainees. She remembered more than she had ever cared to.

_Necessary, indeed,_ she thought, one fist tightening as a wave of anger coursed through her. She exhaled slowly and let it pass over her like a fleeting gust of wind, and for now it was done.

"Alright," Gansükh spoke up, "Now that you've got that out of your system, General, is there anything else you'd like to tell us?"

"Yes," Cole said, his lips forming a thin, tight line across his hard face, "I want you to know that I'll be watching you. I know the score here. I know you're our only real option, the one free hand we have to fight with. But I'll be monitoring your every move, your every radio transmission, with my finger on the button. The governing body of SHIELD doesn't see fit to waste all the resources that have been poured into Project Noah with a full-on nuclear strike on The Ark, but if it looks even for a minute as though your intentions are anything other than the swift and total destruction of the man called Mister Sinister, I will order that strike, consequences be damned. I will not have that ship in the hands of an extremist, murdering fanatic."

"But there are still small communities of civilians in that region," Rin said quietly, "The nuclear yield that would be necessary to destroy a vessel the size of The Ark will surely consume them as well."

"Yes," Cole said grimly, "Yes it will."

There was a long silence then, as the weight of Cole's intentions sunk in.

"Now," the General said, pulling a cigar from the front breast pocket of his uniform, biting off the end, and lighting it with a match, carefully rotating the end in the fire to ensure and even burn, "Moving on to..."

"Requisitions," Vascha said, taking a cue from Cole and producing her pack of cigarettes, lighting one without looking to the man for permission.

"Hm?" Cole grunted, raising a thick eyebrow, chewing the end of his cigar as it filled the room with it's menagerie of scents, clashing with the harsh, ragged bouquet of Vascha's cheap cigarettes.

Vascha sighed as she exhaled smoke. "Give us _guns_."

"Amongst other things," Ben said, "We can draw up our own list of materials we'll need for this operation."

Cole considered this for a moment, his leathery visage not betraying his thoughts on the subject before he decided to speak.

"I was told that you had your own equipment."

"We have some gear," Gansükh said, "Body armor, munitions, a few firearms between us, but nothing that isn't upwards of sixty years old. If you want us to have any shot of pulling this off, we're going to need some hardware."

The General made a contemplative face, as though doing sums in his head. Vascha made a note of how his attitude had shifted once he had made his earlier point. He was not an unreasonable man, or else he would not have been placed in command of such a tremendous military apparatus. He was simply a man raised by military procedure, and anyone or anything that threatened that was like a pest that needed dealing with. Now that he had said his piece, made his objections, and asserted himself in a position of power, he seemed slightly less irritable. Slightly.

"You're already giving us the CHBs," Vascha said, dragging on her cigarette, "I'm guessing you can part with a gun or two."

Cole scratched the leathery skin beneath his chin and puffed on his cigar. "You can take anything you need from our old standard issue storage lockers. No energy weapons, nothing that uses repulsor tech or plasma cores. Nothing with modernized interfaces or ID tags. No exo-skeletal armor. It's bad enough that you're using the CHBs. If you're captured wearing one, Sinister will know for sure that you received outside assistance, even if he won't be sure it necessarily came from us. But all of our newest hardware can be traced directly back here with the same software on The Ark that we use here. No good. You need to be equipped with weapons that Sinister _knows _we wouldn't utilize."

Vascha looked at Gansükh and made a face. As the two members of the team that relied almost exclusively on weapons to be combat effective, that decision affected them the most. It was not what she had hoped to hear. She didn't like the thought of facing whatever Sinister was cooking up on The Ark with _bullets_, but she supposed the thought of carrying a newly-fabricated Gauss rifle into battle was hoping for a little too much. She turned back to General Cole.

_Covering your own ass, you stingy bastard, _she thought, but not with the same venom she had felt when she had first been introduced to the man.

"Deal," she said, "And we keep whatever we use."

Cole's brows wrinkled until his eyebrows nearly met in the middle. His lips pursed in sudden indignation, and he looked about to say something before Vascha continued, cutting him off.

"Think of it as a gesture of good will," she said, "You've already said that the hardware you'll be letting us take is obsolete. What else we're you going to do with it?"

Again, the General chewed on his cigar, now about halfway gone. Vascha stubbed her own cigarette out into a square, glass ashtray in the middle of the table, crushing the cherry out vigorously, the tapping sound it produced echoing softly in the war room.

"Alright," Cole said finally, "Upon completion of your mission, keep the hardware, and you and your families will fall under SHIELD protection. Your criminal records in _all_ countries will be erased, and you will receive assistance setting up a new life in any region where SHIELD has direct influence. Success will only be defined as the confirmed termination of Mister Sinister and the return of The Ark and it's research materials to SHIELD hands."

"You got it," Vascha smiled, though she knew her black teeth and gums were nearly indistinguishable from the rest of her.

Cole pressed a button receded into the table, and the telltale bleep of a live comm coming to life could be heard.

"Continue with their briefing," he said into the hidden microphone before standing up and walking towards the door, the smoke of his cigar now becoming quite pungent as he smoked it down to the last couple of inches.

"You know what?" he said, turning just before he cleared the threshold of the sliding doors.

Vascha and the others looked at him blankly, not knowing how to answer.

General Cole pointed at them, "You all sort of remind me of him." And he let the door slide shut.


	13. Revolution in Flesh

_**Hi readers,**_

_**Well, this is it. The last chapter before the SoL begin their mission. Exciting, no? Be sure to check out the OC submission entry and come up with an OC for later in the narrative. Already have one in this story? Submit again!**_

_**Hori out.**_

The ache in his muscles was unrelenting and burned with a deep intensity that probably would have caused any normal man to cry out in pain. Sinister was not a normal man. The only indication that he felt anything at all was a slight pursing of his lips as the new genetic serum coursed through his veins, destroying, rewriting, and rebuilding the very fabric of his being.

Laura leaned over his extended arm and gazed at the monitors that had been connected to a majority of his vital systems and brain functions. She had the disinterested look of a child dutifully doing her homework, and lackadaisically typed information into the terminal as she browsed the data, leaning her head on her free hand in boredom. She looked down at his arm, naked from the shoulder down, and grasped the series of tubes that pierced his veins and fed the serum into his bloodstream. She forcibly pushed the needles deeper in, giving them a rough shake as though she was reattaching a gas line to a kitchen appliance and making sure the seal took. It was not a gesture of malice. Sinister's rapidly-healing body would push the needles out in a matter of minutes if she did not force them back in. Nevertheless, she did the task with all of the delicacy of a slap in the face, and Sinister let out a low hum of irritation as the needles pierced recently-healed flesh and vein, renewing the burning wash of pain.

Laura looked at him and gave him a rare smile, sarcastic and in-genuine as it was. "Aw, does that hurt?"

Sinister did not reply. Rather, he could not. While undergoing the painful process of rewriting his genetic code with the various serums that he manufactured, parts of his mind would shut down for brief periods of time while sections of his brain were rebuilt or reshaped. Currently, his motor skills had abandoned him, and he was no more capable of speaking than he was of teleporting across the room.

_Though perhaps I could do something about that as well_, he thought, _In good time. I'll have to search the databases again._

Improving and purifying his body, adding and subtracting mutations and aspects of his physiology, was a process of baby-steps that he had been perfecting for nearly a century. He had made the mistake in his earliest experiments of trying to force drastic changes upon his test subjects in a short period of time, with disappointing and occasionally monstrous results. The Worthington boy in particular had been a disaster that still managed to irk Sinister when he thought of it. He was often fighting the urge to go a little further with each of his own injections, to try to add or subtract a little bit more to or from his genetic structure than he had last time, but he knew better. He had learned more than enough lessons at the expense of other's lives. Not that that bothered him.

Sinister became aware of an increasingly bothersome cramping behind his eyes, and felt himself press the back of his head a little harder into the headrest of the medical chair he sat in. Discomfort slowly gave way to pain, and pain was slowly eroded into real agony. Sinister felt himself screw his red eyes shut as the light in the sterile room became a blinding wash of hot knives. The sensation seemed to bore deep down through the middle of his brain, as though someone were pulling a length of rusted wire through his forehead and out the back of his neck. Somewhere far away, he felt his back begin to spasm, and if his ankles and wrists were not fastened with powerful kinetic restraints, he surely would have fallen to the ground in all of his twisting and writhing. Vaguely, he was aware of a new burning sensation in his arm, and slowly, one pulse at a time, the ravaging agony began to subside, transforming little by little back into the dull ache that he was familiar with.

He finally opened his eyes to see Laura removing a syringe from a churning vein in his bicep, then swiftly pull the tubes from the soft flesh of his inner elbow, the obscenely long needles still sputtering the mercury-colored liquid that he fed into his system.

"You should have waited longer between treatments this time," Laura admonished, "Any more and you would have cracked. You're going to end up as broken as Archangel was."

Sinister emitted a low grumble, and suddenly became aware of something in his mouth. He spat, and to his surprise, the tip of his tongue fell to the floor with a wet _slap_, oozing unnatural, purplish blood that was characteristic of his body now after years of genetic cleansing and modifying. In his fit, he had managed to bite it off. Confused, Sinister explored the sensations around and in his mouth, searching for pain, or at the very least an alien sensation of missing a part of his body, and found that the severed section of his tongue had already grown back, the new organ tingling and slightly numb as the nerves still reattached. How fascinating.

Laura regarded the bleeding hunk of flesh on the floor with the same expression that she usually wore; Disinterest.

_My healing abilities have accelerated_, Sinister observed, making a mental note, _Most impressive_.

"Do not presume..." he finally said to Laura in a low growl, the throbbing in his clenched jaw still subsiding, the words coming thick and rough as his brain remembered how to speak again, "To lecture me, girl. I am well aware of my own limits. To compare me to the Worthington brat is to compare gods to insects."

Laura pushed a lock of brown hair from her hard, oval face, shrugged and pressed a button on the nearest monitor. The restraints that held him to the chair hissed and popped open, freeing him. She made a motion to begin removing the sensors from his body, but he shrugged her off, perhaps more roughly than he needed to, and saw about it himself. She rolled her eyes and began sorting through the various pieces of equipment, tidying up where she could, snapping the used needles from the mess of tubes and syringes and dumping them in a nearby sharps container.

Sinister watch her as she worked. He had offered Laura the opportunity once, to pursue the goal of self-perfection as he did, but she had rejected to notion fiercely, citing that she had endured quite enough medical probing for several lifetimes. That had disappointed Sinister. Laura was fickle, dangerous, and only as loyal as she had to be, but he had grown to trust the guarded, seething, fierce woman. It was her very penchant for questioning him and viewing nearly everything laid before her with suspicion that made her so valuable. It would be a shame if she did not reconsider his offer soon, otherwise there would be no place for her in his new world. Then all of his promises to her would be meaningless, through no real fault of his own.

Sinister brought his mind back to the present and began to make a physical and mental inventory, as he always did after he had taken a serum. More often than not, the transformations it brought upon him were measured and predictable, but occasionally, such as in the instance of his newly invigorated healing factor, he found himself pleasantly surprised. This particular version of the serum, however, he had been looking forward to most especially. The intense pain he had experienced in his mind gave him a measure of hope that his research had finally proven fruitful, for that sensation was quite new to him during his injections. But how to know for sure?

He thought of Laura's words earlier, down in the cryo chamber where he had dispatched the late Cain Marko.

"You're not a psychic," she had said.

_Well, let us see_, he thought, and, turning to look at the girl as she perused data on her monitors, tried to reach out to her with his mind.

It was difficult to know if what he was trying to accomplish was even the proper way to go about things. It was as though someone had simply told him he'd grown a third, invisible arm, and then given him no further instructions. Was this correct? Was this how it was done? He could not be sure if he was even exercising the right part of his mind. He tried to imagine his psyche as a beam of red light, cutting through the air between them and entering Laura's mind like a surgical laser. That certainly felt correct, he could almost sense as though her mind and his were connecting, but it was weak, like listening to a radio caught between channels. But how could he be sure if he was imagining it or...

There was a familiar sound of metal raking against bone, and Sinister suddenly realized that Laura was staring at him, her eyes ablaze, the two claws on her left hand extended, the bloody gashes they left between her skin already healed.

A long, tense silence passed between them, and Sinister readied himself for the very real possibility that this would be the moment when he would be forced to kill her.

"Congratulations on your new gift," she said eventually, her mouth practically dripping with venom as she spoke, "Now... Stay the fuck out of my head, Sinister."

Sinister did not know whether to smile or frown, and did neither.

"Of course," he said, retreating from her mind, though he did not know for certain if that was how it worked. It must have been, because Laura seemed to relax immediately, her claws withdrawing back into their housing in her thin forearms.

Despite himself, Sinister could barely contain his own excitement, and did his best to conjure up his usual visage of stoic impartiality. Finally, he was on the right track. For nearly forty years he had been trying to tap into his own psychic abilities, even giving up for months, years at a time out of frustration. But finally, he had uncovered the keys. As always, science had prevailed.

"How did you-" he began.

"Weapon X," Laura said before he could form the question, tapping her head lightly with one finger as she went back to her work, her previous rage seemingly forgotten, "They made a labyrinth out of my head, then built a Fort Knox of psychic defenses around it. Not even Xavier could crack this nut all the way. Same as Logan."

Sinister found himself oddly disappointed by that. Of the many people who's minds he wanted to peer inside of, Laura was most certainly near the top of the inventory. Xavier had been one of the most formidable telepaths in the history of... anything, and the sudden realization that there were limits to even his vast power washed over him like a cold wave.

Still, it was not entirely unexpected. There was always room for practice, and now that the path was coming clear in front of him, he need only remain steady and determined. Perhaps the bar the Xavier set would be a goal, rather than a roadblock.

The door at the far end of the room chimed, and Sinister raised himself off of the chair, savoring the new charge he felt in his muscles as he did. He felt as though he could crush steel to powder in his hands. He pulled his black silk shirt from a metal hanger had had hung from a neglected medical armature light and pulled it on over the black tank top that he wore. He swiftly buttoned it and tucked it into the waist of his slacks before waving a hand over a console, unlocking the sliding doors which parted immediately with a soft hiss of air.

Gorgeous George and Hairbag stepped in, though 'stepping' was hardly the correct term was for what either of the men really did. George slithered across the floor like a living oil spill, his limbs and features warping seemingly at random as he moved. One moment his arms were the appropriate length for any normal man, then next they seemed to swell and lengthen, as though he were some image distorted in a curved mirror. Hairbag scrabbled across the plastic and metal on all fours as he almost always did, his cruel black claws searching in vain for purchase on the smooth surface.

George looked at Sinister, then at Laura, who still sat reviewing data on her monitors, though Sinister suspected that whatever interest she had in the screen had longed passed. She was no scientist. The tasks that Sinister charged her with were no more complicated than any mundane chore, and she had no real passion for the data that the computer relayed to her. She simply wanted to be left alone. George made what might have been a questioning face, and looked as though he was about to ask a question, but the desire to do so seemed to leave him as swiftly as it came. The Nasty Boys knew that Sinister was often experimenting with this or that, and that Laura often acted a laboratory assistant to him, but that was the extent of their knowledge, for, in truth, that was really the only credit that Sinister could give to their limited, hedonistic minds. George seemed to remember this, and thought better of asking what they had been doing. Which, Sinister had no doubt, was what he had contemplated inquiring of them a moment ago.

Hairbag also looked at Laura, but with baser concerns on his mind. The feral mutant operated almost entirely on instinct, and still had not learned any sort of lesson from the thrashings Laura had given him for sticking his nose where it was not wanted. Quite literally. She eyeballed him with death in her gaze, and for once, Hairbag seemed to think better of approaching her.

"Yes, George?" Sinister asked finally when the mutant did not speak for several seconds, and felt himself suppress as sigh. He did love his Nasty Boys, his blunt instruments, as it were, for their obedience and willingness to destroy just about anything placed in their path, but on matters of a more intellectual attitude, they were next to useless. Little better than messenger birds.

"Sir," George nodded curtly, the swift moment creating a rude slurping noise from his ooze-like body, his voice like that of a pile of mud come to life, thick and wet, "The download of the launch codes from SHIELD is nearly done. Maybe three hours or so left. The computers haven't said nothing that'd suggest they're not the genuine article like Laura said they would."

"Haven't said _anything_," Sinister corrected. George stared at him blankly. Sinister rolled his eyes, "Nevermind."

It was as he expected. SHIELD was bound to give up the launch codes to him. They had no bargaining leg to stand on, and while their military might was still formidable, their political power had done nothing but wane in the past years, and they could not afford any sort of public incident. Not if they hoped to maintain was little credibility the rotten husk of the United States had left. Still, he supposed Laura was right. They would never give him the codes so easily if they did not have some half-cocked plan to fall back on. No doubt some ludicrous attempt at an air-strike. The Ark was more than adequate protection from such an attack.

"Very good," Sinister said, "We'll make our way to the main bridge when the download is complete, and begin the launch sequence. Have the genome troopers man The Ark's battle stations and main battery."

Laura turned swiftly in her chair. "Spread a hundred soldiers over a two mile ship? What are you, insane? How are they going to defend against-"

"Against what, exactly?" Sinister cut her off and raised his hands to either side, as though to show her that no invisible threats existed around them, "We're not under attack, girl. And if SHIELD really is that foolish, The Ark has more than adequate automated defenses. I need the ship's main compliment of cannons online and manned for when SHIELD tries some stunt to take her back once we're airborne, which I'm sure they will."

"But a small strike team..." she started again.

"Ah," Sinister raised a finger to his head as though remembering something, "I do believe that's why I have you, Laura."

In truth, that prospect had crossed his mind more than once. Even now some band of jugheaded SHIELD soldiers could be making their way to his position, but the idea did not particularly bother him. It took far more than a group of men with guns to make him nervous. If such a group did exist, he'd cut them down like cattle. Or, rather, Laura and the Nasty Boys would.

Besides, Sinister could not afford to be questioned so in front of George and Hairbag. Stupid as they were when compared to him, they were not immune to detecting weakness in leadership, and the last thing he needed was those two getting bright ideas.

"You're dismissed," he said, waving an arm at the two men, "See to it that my uniform is brought to my private quarters."

Sinister looked at George's oily, wet-looking hands, and then at Hairbag's, hairy and caked with brown flecks of what might have been dirt of blood or both. He thought of those hands touching his clothing and curled a lip in distaste.

"Have Ramrod do it," Sinister added as the the two turned to leave.

As he watched Hairbag scrabble across the floor on his hands and feet, Sinister suddenly had an idea. Again, he visualized his mind shooting outward like a laser, zeroing in on the feral mutant's brain, focusing like a microscope on his very psyche. Perhaps beginning with Laura had been too ambitious, he reasoned. But a mind like Hairbag's...

The fur-covered mutant shuddered suddenly, stopped in his tracks, his rough hair standing on end, and abruptly leapt into the air, doing half a somersault and landing hard on his head with a sharp thud against the polished floor. Nearly oblivious to the pain of it, Hairbag jumped to his feet and looked around, panic and rage painted on his ugly features. George had stopped to look at the smaller man in utter shock.

Sinister let out a dry chuckle, and covered his mouth to obscure the smile that he wore. Concentrating, he tried something else.

_Both of you_, he thought at the two men, _Get a move on. Now._

George and Hairbag looked at Sinister as though they had been slapped. A myriad of expressions worked their way across both men's faces, ranging from fear to anger to outright confusion. Finally, they exchanged glances and, slowly, began inching backwards, as though they did not want to expose their backs to Sinister as they proceeded down the hallway.

"Y-yes..." George stammered, "Yes sir."

The sliding doors hissed and clicked shut.

Sinister laughed again, this time making no efforts to hide it. He was positively overjoyed. True, accessing the minds of men like George and Hairbag was probably nothing to brag about in the realm of telepathy, but he knew he was on the right track. He need only practice, and work upon improving the serum that would bolster his abilities. He would get to work on it immediately.

A sudden and unwelcome ache pulsed in his head, and he massaged one temple with two fingers. He supposed that was all part of it. He was exercising a muscle that, until minutes ago, he did not have. There would be growing pains, exhaustion, the lingering spasms of creation.

He turned to Laura's chair, but found that she no longer occupied it. He looked around, suddenly disturbed that he had been so distracted as to not hear her move around the room, and relaxed when he saw her stowing the last of the equipment in a small medical locker. She looked at him, raising an eyebrow, and clicked the locker door closed.

"What?" she asked.

Sinister did not answer, but turned, waved his hand over the door's console, and walked out of the room. As the doors began to slide shut, he looked back at her, grinning wickedly, despite the growing pain in his head.

"Prepare yourself," he said, "The new empire takes flight today."


	14. Descent into Hell

Ben tugged at the collar of the shirt he wore under his body armor and HALO repulsor gear. It was a memetic poly-carbon weave not unlike the uniforms that the first X-Men had worn, but they had not had the benefit of being able to get the skin-tight clothing tailored to their exact body dimensions, and parts simply didn't fit as well as they could have. He supposed it couldn't be helped, but that didn't stop him from feeling the tightness of the material around his neck.

He had to give SHIELD credit, though. He had been sure that the weapons and armor General Cole was allowing them access to would be a disappointment, but everyone on the team had been pleasantly surprised by the quality and sheer volume of the equipment. While nothing quite so fancy as the exo-skeletal, nanite-enhanced suits that many of the world's armed forces now used almost exclusively, the uniforms that they had managed to piece together were certainly nothing to turn your nose up at. Body-contouring carbon-fiber and ceramic plates covered his vitals, as well as the tops of his arms and legs and over his shoulders, kidneys and spine. The technology behind the plates, while outdated by several years to be sure, was still a wonder, allowing the light, nearly impenetrable material to flex with his body's movement There was even some in the gloves most of them chose to wear, sitting above the first three fingers and the top of the hand to serve the same function as brass knuckles, as well as protection. He was not so sure that the mission would break down to exchanging blows, but it was reassuring, nonetheless.

Vascha and Gansükh had taken the most out of the storage locker, hefting guns and ammunition and armor in their arms and over their shoulders, so much that Agent Travis had actually taken a SHIELD soldier aside and made him help Vascha carry her load. At the time, Ben had wondered where exactly the two planned on putting so much gear, but he had to hand it to them; Though they looked over-encumbered, nearly every piece of equipment they had selected was strapped here or there onto their bodies where it would not interfere with their movement, and they bore the load with no complaint, even when the SHIELD scientists had strapped the batteries they needed to use the CHBs onto their backs. They were only about the size of two soda cans stacked on one another, but Ben could tell by the face Gansükh made when it was attached to him and linked into his own CHB unit that it wasn't light.

Ben himself had decided on the same carbine that Vascha had selected from the locker; An XM10 Scorpion manufactured by the now-defunct Stark Weapons Systems, and he lifted it onto his lap for probably the third time to inspect it's components. It had the reliability and efficiency that one would expect from a gas-operated carbine of its type, with the ability to exchange parts and accommodate a variety of additions to the weapon. Despite that appeal, Ben imagined that Vascha had chosen it for the same reason he had; It was one of the only weapons that had been designed to accommodate the fabled 5.56x45mm PhoenixBane ammunition that they had all been shocked to see in large quantities in SHIELD's possession.

Before traditional bullets had been replaced by coil and repulsor technology, there had been a demand on munitions companies to develop an ammunition type that could penetrate a variety of shield types used by mutants, as well as slip through telekinetic and magnetic interference. Each round projected a miniature shield of its own that allowed it to blow through most energy barriers and psionic shields easily, as well as chew its way through body armor. As far as Ben had known, the ammunition had never gone into full-scale production. A notion obviously disproven by SHIELD's crates upon crates of the stuff. Going into a situation with so many unknown variables such as this, the PhoenixBane was at least a little comfort.

_If this thing goes south,_ Ben mused, _It won't be for lack of shooting back._

Ben looked around him in the small, cramped space of the Helicarrier's aptly-named 'body dropper.' Unlike most traditional HALO jumps, which took place out of the rear cargo hatch out a plane or transport carrier, SHIELD had designed a separate room into the Helicarrier with the expressed purpose of people jumping out of it in mind. It seemed insane at first, until you considered that the Helicarrier's cargo areas were the size of basketball courts, and maybe opening the massive doors in the middle of a flight wouldn't be such a great idea unless you wanted to take the time to strap down several tons of equipment and crates first. The red operational lights were the only source of illumination, which made Vascha that much harder to see. From where Ben sat, her outline appeared fuzzy, as though his eyes could not bring her into focus. Gansükh sat next to her, and though he could not hear their words over the cacophony of engine noises that plagued the body dropper, he imagined they must be discussing the mission. They would effectively be the leaders of each group of three.

Hunter, Ciara and Rin sat in a stark contrast to Vascha, Gansükh and himself, Ben noted. Between them, the only one that carried a noticeable weapon was Rin, with her three Japanese swords stored securely on her back, each in their own carbon-fiber cylinder where they would avoid damage in their descent. He knew that Hunter would carry a combat knife somewhere on his body, but he preferred to fight using blades of air that he conjured from the atmosphere around him. Ciara had a similar distaste for any conventional weapons. The closest Ben had ever seen her come to armed combat was beating a soldier nearly to death with his own gun. She had even forgone a majority of options that had been made available to them in body armor, choosing to keep her body as unencumbered as possible. Ben envied her bravery, but imagined that having a healing factor was at least partially responsible for that.

A door in the front of the chamber opened, and there was a rush of air as Travis stepped into the room. For once, he did not wear his usual black suit and tie, but a flight suit, gloves, and helmet. For a moment, Ben had not recognized him without seeing his slicked-back black hair.

Travis touched a finger to a microphone at his throat, the same type that they all now wore, and the receiver in Ben's ear clicked. Ben realized that Travis had turned his microphone off. He motioned for them to do the same. Ben reached up and flipped the small switch on the device wrapped around his neck, touching his adam's apple, and the ambient static in one ear faded.

"We're nearing the drop zone!" Travis shouted over the dull roar of the ship's engines, then turning to look at Vascha's ill-defined form, "I have something for you!"

Vascha stood and walked toward him, holding one hand over her ear to better hear Travis as he shouted at her. He opened his flight suit and produced a small package, the size of several packs of cards, and placed it in her hand.

"SHIELD would never officially endorse this," he yelled over the noise, "But if you can't take out Sinister, your next best bet will be to destroy The Ark! This package will do the job! It has a remote trigger, all you need to do is consult your blueprint and decide where to put it. Any of the reactor engines would work!"

"Let me guess!" Vascha shouted back, "If it comes to that, we probably shouldn't come back here!"

"It's a last resort," Travis shouted, "And not a great one! But what I said is true! If you can't get to Sinister before he takes off in The Ark, you'll probably never be able to get close to him again! You're right, though! The penny pinchers will never let you get away with blowing up a multi-billion dollar investment!"

"Well," Vascha tucked the small explosive package into her shirt between the armor plates, "No one expects us to come back anyway!"

Travis frowned, "You know a lot of us are rooting for you, Ms. Aleksandrov!"

Vascha laughed and punched Travis in the shoulder, "Call me Vascha!"

"We'll see you when you get back, Ms... Vascha!" Travis shouted, then clicked the microphone at his neck back on. Ben and the rest of the team did the same.

"Masks on," Travis's voice crackled in Ben's ear, slightly hoarse from the strain of shouting, "Drop in one minute!"

One cue, a standby light blinked to life on the ceiling, signaling the doors at the far end of the chamber would open soon. Travis took a moment to fasten his suit to one of the many handles that lined the wall and slipped a respirator mask over his mouth.

Ben and the rest of the team stood to join Vascha. They each reached over their heads and pulled the black leather and kevlar caps over their faces. The masks covered everything except the nose and mouth, with a set of eyeholes covered in glass, making each of them look like insects with compound eyes. Suddenly Ben's visible world was much smaller, his peripheral vision eliminated almost entirely, forcing him to stare directly at anything he wished to see. Then, each in turn, they produced the mouthpiece of their masks from their equipment and snapped them into place. Ben heard a hiss and felt the rush of compressed, cold air fill his lungs as the respirator began to do it's work.

"Drop gear!" Travis' voice sounded in his ear.

Ben looked down at the panel on his chest. Affixed there was a device almost as impressive as the CHB harness that Ben had been fitted with underneath his armor. From what he had been told, it was a single-use personal repulsor that allowed for extremely rapid air drops without putting soldiers at risk by making them sit in the air suspended by a parachute. The device would sense when they had reached a minimal altitude, and deploy a repulsor field that would stop the free fall almost instantly. He pressed down on the large, crystalline chest piece, and it powered up with a satisfying vibration. He looked around at the others, and figured he was probably the only one of them besides Hunter who was completely okay with jumping out of the Helicarrier. He had been separated from the Earth for nearly a day now, and while the urge to vomit and fall asleep at the same time had waned over time, the intense anxiety the sensation caused him was barely under control. He would gladly plummet to the ground if it meant he could touch it.

A secondary standby light illuminated, and there was a tremendous rush as the chamber depressurized, and the door at the far end of the room opened outward, creating a ramp into the oblivion of the sky. The first thing that struck Ben was the cold. It was a thin, biting, knife-sharp cold that penetrated his many layers of armor and clothing with a disturbing ease. Ben took a look at his equipment strapped to his body and lightly tugged at his carbine, making sure it was securely affixed to him.

As though they had done it a thousand times, the team calmly formed a circle around Hunter, each grabbing hold of him somewhere on his body armor, making sure to keep his hands and arms free. Hunter did not wear a repulsor, and would be using his air manipulation exclusively both to slow his own descent, and to guide them to their landing zone.

_Speaking of landing zone... _Ben thought, remembering to power up the guidance system of his mask. Instantly, small images began to crowd the surface of the goggles in front of his eyes, forming a heads up display the included direction, wind speed, and altitude. A small red arrow dance across his vision, indicating where their primary landing site had been painted with a GPS satellite.

"Ready to drop!" Travis shouted, again fighting to be heard over the roar of wind and air.

"Ready!" they each shouted back, giving thumbs up.

A green light illuminated overhead, and Travis made a sweeping motion with one arm towards the open door, towards the breathtaking vastness of the open even sky, dull orange with waning sunlight.

"Go! Go! Go!"

"This is going to be rough," Hunter warned, "When we're this high up, there's less I can do to control the air. Hang on tight."

He made a waving motion with his hands, and there was a vague glow of blue light as Ben felt a buffet of air gather up beneath them, growing stronger and stronger with each second. Then, Ben's heart leapt into his throat as the air current shifted and they were all blown out the open door and into the freezing void of the upper atmosphere like bullets out of a gun.

For a moment, Ben was gripped with fear as the wind blasted against him, it's cold bite gnawing at him where there was the least amount of coverage between his skin and the open sky. The sensation of free fall caused his mind to panic on all fronts for several seconds before he managed to get a handle on the effects it had. He struggled to maintain his hold on Hunter's armored torso, and somehow managed to keep his grip. Ben turned his head to look at the Helicarrier. It was already disappearing into the darkening sky, it's massive engines thundering through the air, seeming to tear a hole though the clouds as it passed them, as though it were wounding the sky with it's size.

The lights on the heads up display in his goggles began to jitter with rapidly changing information, telling him of his descending altitude, his speed, and the various meteorological aspects of the atmosphere around him. Most importantly, it highlighted their landing zone, only indicated by the same familiar red arrow; The ground was still not visible through the thick cloud cover they descended through.

Hunter was waving his hands, making slow, methodical gestures this way and that, the air around him glowing with that faint blue light, and Ben felt a sudden shock as a current of air hit them as hard as an ocean wave, urging them in the direction of their target. It came several times more in rapid succession, pushing them further and further in their intended direction, the red arrow in Ben's goggles coming closer to being directly under them with ever wave of air. Ben wanted to shout something to Hunter about doing something to soften the force of the wind, but he knew he wouldn't be able to hear.

Everything went a hazy white as they passed through the densest of the clouds as they began to enter the lower atmosphere of the Earth. For several seconds, Ben could not even see he hand in front of his face, only the numbers and letters in his goggles, one of which was dropping very quickly. Ben felt suddenly soaked with freezing moisture as they passed through a particularly thick section of clouds, and just as quickly, they were gone, and the clouds were left behind them. Nothing between them and the ground except...

_Holy hell... _Ben thought to himself.

The blueprints and holograms they had studied of course had given indications as to the size of The Ark, but you could not really grasp, could not really see how vast it truly was until it filled your vision. Deep purple and blue, with highlights of gold and orange from the waning light of day, it was like the exoskeleton of some great dead insect, it's slick, shimmering surface dancing in the evening sunlight, bright almost to the point that Ben felt the urge to look away. All over it, tiny points of white light blinked or emitted a steady glare. Light, Ben realized. It was getting ready to take off. It had it's lights on.

Ben could not help but marvel. It was one of the largest things he had ever seen. It was a mobile fortress. A movable city. The Helicarrier, for all of it's bulk, did not even compare, and seemed more a toy than a flying fortress when compared to The Ark.

Hunter began to gesture again and, as he had promised, the currents of air came smoother now. They were being gently eased towards their destination, rather than shoved. It would not be long now. The repulsor on his chest confirmed his suspicion by emitting a low hum as it detected their proximity to the ground.

_I hope you're ready for us, Sinister_, Ben thought,_ I really do_.


	15. Savor the Kill

_**So, two months and fifty thousand words later and we're finally getting into the meat of the first act. For those of you thinking this story might be close to over... Oh boy. This is quite literally just the beginning. I'm actually considering breaking the story up into three different 'books' for the sake of not intimidating new readers with an ongoing story that has dozens and dozens of chapters. We'll see.**_

_**Hori out.**_

Rin could feel The Ark towering over her. Sound bounced from it's slick exterior easily, and she could make out every facet of the section that loomed above, including the access door that was currently being guarded by two soldiers that Rin could only assume we're Sinister's 'genome troopers,' as SHIELD had called them. The craft stretched so far into the distance on either side that Rin could not detect on end with her sharp ears. There were other ways to gain access to the ship, of course, but none more direct than this, and time was a factor. Just before initiating radio silence, Travis had relayed to them that there was increased activity in the thermal scans of The Ark's science wing. Sinister would be moving soon.

Vascha leaned around the side of the storage warehouse they hid behind and looked for herself. Rin supposed there were some advantages to her blindness; She would never have to do something as alarming as sticking her head out of perfectly good cover to _see_ something. Then again, Vascha's light absorption was an almost perfect camouflage in growing darkness, and there was almost no chance they would be spotted.

These two soldiers would mark the first resistance they met. The facility that surrounded The Ark, almost a city in it's own right, with apartments and small stores for the facility's workers as well as laboratories and manufacturing plants, had been hauntingly deserted. Wild animals from the desert that surrounded them had even begun to take root in some places. As they had entered the outskirts of the facility, a coyote had darted out a building and bolted into the darkness of the landscape, causing Ciara to snarl like some beast before Vascha had silenced her with a look and a gloved finger to her lips. They had moved through the facility quickly in an incursion pattern they had practiced and utilized probably thousands of times. They advanced at a half-run, ducked low and pressing themselves against buildings, each team member separated by ten feet or so, each looking in a different direction. Ciara took point as usual, getting them to their destination by scent and instinct as much as consultation of her map.

"Echo," Vascha said, using Rin's codename as they all did during an operation, her voice barely a whisper, "You get the one on the right. No sound."

"Of course," Rin replied, idly touching the hilt of her katana. After Hunter had landed them safely, she had discarded the tubes she had carried the swords in for the HALO jump, and now wore the katana and wakizashi properly at her waist, the small tanto tucked into the body armor around her torso.

"Ambush," Vascha glanced at Gansükh, "You're the eyes."

Gansükh simply nodded, unslinging his rifle before disappearing into nothingness. If anything went wrong in the next few moments, he would support them with covering fire. His cloaking ability would have made him ideal for the job that Rin herself was about to do, but the Tibetan boy was a sniper both in his brain and his heart, and he did not favor up close and personal fights.

Ciara, Hunter and Ben pressed themselves against the wall, waiting. Ciara inhaled deeply through her nose and nodded at Vascha. "It's just them," she said.

Vascha looked at Rin. "Go."

Rin darted around the corner in a half-crouch, moving swiftly and silently through the shadows of the surrounding buildings that she had to sense rather than see, with Vascha close behind on the opposite side of the street. The two soldiers stood about twenty yards off, guarding an open, ramped alcove that had been designed to accommodate armored vehicles as they moved on to and off of the ship. It had no conventional door, and while the ship was still grounded, it would remain open. Once the ship's main engines were fired up, Travis had explained, the door would be sealed by a kinetic barrier.

The soldiers were attentive, with no signs of fatigue or laziness from having been made to stand their patrol for so long, but Rin could discern from the body language all she needed to know; They were bored. They simply stood, one on either side of the passage, staring straight ahead, their Gauss rifle's held casually in front of them, only occasionally taking a real active interest in the various miniscule sounds that permeated the abandoned facility around them. Even so, this would be no simple maneuver. There was no room to get around them and sneak up from behind. They would have to get as close as they could, and use surprise to their advantage. There would be no room for error or hesitation.

Rin began to slow as she closed the distance, knowing the shadows that she hid in would become more sparse as she got close to The Ark, with it's many landing lights and flood lamps. Light and shadow had been no easy thing for Rin to master. She had to pay strict attention to hundreds of minute factors, from temperature, to angles, to the size and shape of light sources to imagine where light ended and darkness began. Logan had drilled her endlessly on that. She was roughly ten yards away, and silent as a ghost. Now eight... Now six...

She could not know when exactly Vascha would use her powers to drain the light from the surrounding area. They had never discussed it. Rin simply knew that it would happen before she exposed herself. Their familiarity with each other was so absolute that no plan or direction need be discussed. The only indication that Rin had when Vascha had done the thing was a faint noise of surprise that emitted from one of the soldier's masked faces when the sudden blackness overtook him like a fog of nothingness. It was then that Rin struck.

She drew the wakizashi, more suitable for this situation than the long katana, and bounded at the soldier on the right, low and fast and quiet, crossing the last few yards in fractions of a second. Though Vascha approached her target just as silently (even encumbered with equipment as she was), Rin could feel her footfalls, and could tell that they were in perfect synch. They would reach the soldiers at the exact same time. In the absolute darkness of that Vascha had created, they might as well have not existed.

Rin reached out one hand and looped it through the strap that kept the soldier's rifle slung across his chest, his hands only loosely holding the weapon. She jerked the strap taut and used the force of the man pulling back in surprise to swing around behind him, simultaneously pulling his rifle out of his grip, and choking him tightly around the neck with the length of nylon. Instinctively, the soldier reached up to grasp at the strap that threatened to crush his trachea, and in doing so betrayed the softer, un-plated sections of his exo-skeletal suit. She slid the adamantium sword into the exposed area beneath his armpit where there was minimal armor to block it. The wakizashi drove through his ribcage as though it wasn't there, pierced a lung, then the heart, then the other lung in one long thrust. She withdrew the blade roughly two thirds of the way out of his body, then twisted it, turned it, and pushed it at an upward angle. The blade exited by his collar bone, only to plunge into the flesh under the soldier's jawline, through the cavity inside his face, and into the brain. The entire sequence of maneuvers had taken less than three seconds and the man was dead before he had even had time to process being attacked. The only sound he made was a gurgle and a hiss of air as his last breath escaped bubbling from the holes in his ribs and throat.

Rin kept her grasp on the strap of his rifle as she withdrew her blade, slowly lowering him to the ground that was now a puddle of vital fluids. She shook the blade free of blood and replaced it in its scabbard. She could hear Vascha doing the same with her short blades. Vascha's attack had been different, but just as efficient. Rin could sense nearly a dozen separate deep puncture wounds all over Vascha's man's body; She had used Logan's claws to their full effect, stabbing the guard in just about every organ and artery that she could in the few seconds she had been afforded.

Rin had never guessed, had never imagined the raw power that could exist in pieces of metal, but she now finally, truly understood the reverence people held for the strange metal called adamantium. It was strength and destruction incarnate. She grasped at the sheathed swords at her side, a deep sense of renewed awe for the weapons she carried filling her. She could practically feel their hunger to be released again.

They made no attempt to hide the bodies, and simply left them where they had fallen as they ran up the short ramp and ducked into the deep shadow within. Vascha looked at Rin and nodded, and Rin raised a hand into the air, pointing one finger and making quick circles, calling the rest of them team to their position.

Ben and Hunter came first, crouched low and running, eager to reach the ship and get out of the exposing light produced by The Ark. As they closed the distance, Hunter raised his hand up, and in a glow of blue light, propelled Ben and himself up the last few yards to their side. Ben took the landing slightly awkwardly, tucking and rolling quietly as his feet made contact with the metal walkway, while Hunter touched down with effortless grace.

"Show off," Ben whispered, but not without a good natured tone to his voice.

Gansükh was next, simply materializing out of thin air beside Rin. Not for the first time, she was inexplicably irritated that she could not hear him at all when he was cloaked. It was maddening to know that he could so easily fool her senses, and she was thankful that, up to this point, she had never faced another mutant that could deceive her so.

Ciara brought up the rear, her posture suggesting a stalking predator more than a girl. Her shoulders and the muscles of her back arched and rippled like waves as she moved, her head occasionally darting this way and that to catch and catalogue new scents as they passed by in the air around her. Just before she reached the ramp, she stopped abruptly and looked at one fallen guard, and then the other. She knelt beside one, dipped a finger into the pool of blood around the body, and brought it to her nose, sniffing it.

Vascha knew better than to break radio silence or call out to the girl, but she quietly drummed her fingers impatiently on her crouched knee as she watched Ciara. They all had tremendous respect for the girl's senses, and if she stopped to smell something, they knew better than to question its imprtance.

Finally, the tall Italian girl stood, wiping her finger on the leg of her pants and shaking her head. She turned and joined them, crouching into the shadows with the rest of the team.

"What?" Vascha inquired.

"It's just that they smell like..." Ciara looked back at the bodies, then shook her head again, "Nevermind. It's nothing."

Vascha let out an impatient grunt and brought up her left hand for the rest of them to see. Rin knew that, as Vascha opened her fingers, a small holographic display embedded in her glove would display a miniaturized map of The Ark, as though the craft were sitting in her palm. Rin could gain no benefit from such devices, and did her best to visualize the ship in her head. Travis had been good enough to provide her with a detailed three-dimensional model of it while they were on the Helicarrier, and Rin had taken great care to commit it to memory, constructing the massive hulk in her mind as she ran her fingers along it and bounced sound waves off of its surface.

"Down this corridor is the main junction," Vascha said, "We break into groups Alpha and Bravo here. Alpha will proceed to the upper levels and gain access to the weather tower. Bravo will enter the parkway here and remain in cover until Sinister emerges from the science wing here. Once the target is spotted, Alpha will break silence and confirm with Bravo via short-wave radio transmission."

She closed her hand. "Got it?"

They all nodded.

"We continue to run the op silent until Ambush takes his shot," Vascha said, standing to a crouch, drawing one of her adamantium blades in one hand, and turning down the dark, empty entrance to the ship, "Let's move."

* * *

><p>Laura did not like the The Ark's vast, sloping parkway. Though its designers had done their best to evoke the natural beauty of a forested park like those of many Northeastern American cities, she saw through it's cheap facade almost instantly, and the animalistic part of her personality shirked at the manufactured nature of it all. It had been incorporated into the design back when The Ark was still intended to be an icon of former United States ingenuity, and was supposed to have a reassuring, calming effect on its inhabitants, as well as put on display the sublime, luxurious power of the vessel. Looking up at the vast, domed ceiling hundreds of feet above her head, it's unnatural light blue color a cheap imitation of a summer sky, Laura simply found the whole thing rather sad and unnecessary.<p>

The effect of walking through the lift that carried them from the science wing in the bowels of the ship to the main deck and emerging into the offensively imitative greenery was jarring to say the least, but no one besides her seemed to think anything of it. Looking into the distance at the ship's main bridge that jutted up like a small skyscraper at the far end of the park, Laura could not shake the instinctive part of her that warned of how exposed they were in the open, but she shrugged that notion off.

_It only seems like we're in the open_, she thought, _we're still as locked in a tin can as we were a moment ago._

Still, it was a good deal of ground to cover, and Laura found herself checking every bush, every shrub, every tree for some errant, alien movement, and sniffing the air for any foreign smells. She silently cursed the ship's architects. In order to make sure that the parkway was utilized and enjoyed, they had designed no easy way to cross this section of the ship without using it. There were automatic walkways in the lower decks, but like so many things about the ship, they remained inactive and closed off while The Ark was grounded and without it's launch codes.

Sinister seemed a man in a state of cautious but continuous bliss, if he was even capable of feeling bliss. The broad smile he wore seemed to confirm that he could, but like all all of his smiles, there was something wicked and cruel hiding behind it that Laura could not ignore. He was not oblivious to suspicion at the fact that SHIELD was giving the launch codes so easily, but the download had completed without a hitch. He wore a uniform that he had apparently fabricated specifically for this event: A suit of military-style cut, but a deep purplish black, with dark red trim and red epaulettes adorning his shoulders. He even wore a black medallion with red jeweled inlay over his breast where medals would traditionally sit. If Hell had it's own Navy, in that getup Sinister would not be ill-suited to play the part of its admiral.

_What a peacock_, Laura thought, and was once again reminded how thankful she had been that Sinister's newly fabricated mental abilities had bounced off of her psychic defenses like waves against rocks. His attempt to access her mind had been almost painfully childlike and fumbling in their rudimentary nature, but she knew far better than to assume that Sinister would not spend the next days, weeks, months, even years attempting to perfect his skills. The thought concerned her.

Their party struck Laura as some kind of strange, miniaturized parade procession. Sinister walked along the winding path that guided them through the trees and false fields of the parkway flanked by eight genome troopers that formed two separate boxes around him. They did so at Laura's insistence. Much as she hated the troopers, she could not shake the feeling in her guts that the parkway was dangerous, despite all evidence to the contrary, and that Sinister needed protection during the long walk to the bridge.

Ramrod, George, and Hairbag proceeded in a slightly less orderly fashion. Ramrod walked like a man on a stroll, the piece of wood he always carried extended to the length of a walking stick. Not that he needed one to support his weight; He seemed to simply like holding it as he walked, occasionally lifting his head and taking a deep breath, wearing a smile as though he were too stupid to realize that the air in the parkway hardly smelled any different than anywhere else on the ship. He even occasionally stopped and regarded one of the parkway's many trees, and Laura fought the urge to scream at him to keep pace. He wouldn't have listened anyway.

George followed close behind Laura like the wretch he was, randomly chuckling to himself with that foul, oily laugh of his. Laura knew what amused him so; Her skin-tight, armor-covered black uniform that she had pulled from her storage locker for this occasion left little to the imagination. It would only satisfy George further if she turned and confronted him about his behavior, no doubt he had some insult already prepared for her in his disgusting mind. Laura had never been cross enough with George to see if adamantium claws would hurt his flowing, shape-shifting body, but she wondered for perhaps the hundredth time if she might try and find out.

Hairbag, thankfully, was not joining George in ogling her. He had bounded ahead in manic glee upon seeing the open spaces of the parkway, and sprinted on all fours through the grass and wooded areas. Occasionally he would fling himself from the branch of one of the short trees and his shadow would cast over the path they walked on as he flew through the air to land on another limb. Every so often George would shout Hairbag's name and the small, fur-covered, hyena-like man would begrudgingly return to the path for a moment or two like a loyal dog. Besides Sinister, George was the only person that Hairbag would obey instantly, but even still, the feral mutant could not be restrained long, and would leap into a run to pursue anything that caught his interest at the drop of a hat. The parkway had all of the accoutrements of a real eco-system, including insects, birds, and a small selection of small animals (diligently restrained from entering the ship's lower decks with a series of kinetic barriers, of course), and the slightest scent of a squirrel or rabbit would render Hairbag helpless to the urge to pursue.

"George," Laura snapped as Hairbag scampered over the path, nearly taking her feet out from beneath her as he passed by, "Get him under control before I castrate him."

George looked about to make some snide remark, but seemed to think better of it when he noted that Sinister had turned to look at them as he walked, his face contorted in a disdainful frown.

"Hairbag!" George shouted.

In seconds, Hairbag bounded from between several large shrubs mashing a squirrel in his drooling maw. He swallowed the animal, its small bones snapping as they were forced down his gullet, and trotted to George's side, apparently satisfied for now.

Laura knew they were roughly halfway across the parkway when they approached a small wooden bridge spanning a small artificial creek. The small body of water snaked through the park in an endless stream of being collected and redeposited in the reservoir in the Northeasten corner. Sinister stepped onto the bridge, his boots stomping loudly on the wooden planks as he proceeded.

Suddenly, Laura head something that compelled her to stop dead in her tracks. It was not a sound, per se, more of a buzzing in her sensitive ears, high in frequency and pitch. Almost like a sustained chirping noise. Hairbag seemed to notice it as well, his ears pricking as he raised up onto two legs to sniff the air.

"Wait," Laura said, and the procession stopped.

Sinister turned, his expression both bored and annoyed. "Yes, Laura?"

And just like that, it was gone. Hairbag seemed to forget about the noise as soon as it ceased, returning to his usual crouched posture, scratching behind his neck with a clawed hand.

Laura made a full turn, looking in all directions, searching for the source of the noise. She supposed it was not inconceivable that it was some sound produced by the ship itself. Some mechanical process that she'd simply never heard before. But still, there had been something about it that rubbed her the wrong way.

"Nothing," she said eventually, "It's nothing."

* * *

><p>Gansükh tensed as he looked down the scope of the rifle, feeling a hot flash move down his body starting at the base of his neck, prickling the hairs and causing a thin sheen of sweat to almost instantly encase his body.<p>

"Two of them heard that," he said in barely a whisper, "Don't do it again until I'm ready to fire."

Rin did not reply, but simply made a small noise of affirmation before she said, "Three hundred and twenty-two yards with the drop factored in."

Gansükh nodded and made a small adjustment on one of the knobs on his telescopic sight. Rin used her ability to generate high-pitched sound as a sort of range-finder, judging distance by the time it took for the sound to travel back to her.

"Do you see him?" Hunter asked, laying flat on his stomach as Rin did on the metal platform that sat preciously atop the large weather tower, with Gansükh situated between them with his rifle. Hunter carried no binoculars, and at the great distance between them and Sinister, he could not see with any reliability.

"Yeah," Gansükh replied, making another small adjustment on his scope, "I got him."

For all of the hardware that had been made available to him on the Helicarrier, Gansükh still used his Chinese-made QBU 88. Beside them rested a modified AK-47 with its rear stock removed and a drum magazine affixed, as well as a bag of other weapons and munitions that he had opted to take along on the mission, but he could not bring himself to replace his sniper rifle with a more modern variant. He knew every inch of the QBU, from the exact dimensions of its barrel down to the small springs in its action. He had cleaned and perfected every aspect of the weapon over the years, and would never take such an important shot with any other. He clicked off the safety and reached up to the microphone at his neck, clicking it on. Hunter and Rin did the same.

"This is Team Leader Alpha," he whispered, "Calling Team Leader Bravo. Come back. Over."

"Team Leader Bravo here," Vascha's voice crackled in his ear, "Sit-rep. Over."

"Target in sight," Gansükh brought his eye back up to the scope and looked at Sinister, oblivious as he walked across the bridge, flanked on all sides by his armed troops. Behind him were the four mutants that Travis had profiled for them on the Helicarrier. Gorgeous George, Hairbag, Ramrod, and the unidentified young woman. "Are you in position? Over."

"We're in position. Waiting on your move. Fire up your CHB battery and be ready for dustoff. Weapons free. Over"

Gansükh grunted at Hunter and shrugged his shoulder, gesturing at the cylindrical battery on his back. Hunter reached over and flipped it's main switch. Instantly, Gansükh felt it's radiating power and warmth between his shoulder blades, and wondered offhand how safe carrying the heavy power source was. In a perfect world, they would each have their own battery, but the SHIELD scientists had explained that their components were far too expensive and sparsely-found, and they were lucky to have one per team. Gansükh only need be within arms reach of Hunter and Rin before he pulled the cord on his belt that would activate the device, and they would be back on the Helicarrier before any of Sinister's cronies even knew what happened. Hopefully.

"Last check," Gansükh whispered.

"Wind unchanged," Hunter said, closing his eyes and raising a hand slightly in a gesture of concentration, "Barometric pressure and humidity unchanged."

Rin emitted one last high pitched chirp, waited for a fraction of a second and said, "You're clear. Send it."

Gansükh peered down the scope, the crosshairs within resting slightly above Sinister's head to account for the bullet's drop as it fired. From this distance the bullet would travel in a noticeable downward arc, and he would have roughly over a second to watch before the round hit the mark.

For reasons he could not fully understand, he remembered his first time hunting in the Mongolian countryside. He remembered the first man he killed. A Chinese soldier he had shot in the chest. He remembered the first time he met Vascha and Hunter and Ciara and Ben and Rin. He remembered Logan.

In his scope, he saw Sinister stop suddenly halfway across the bridge. Gansükh felt the bottom of his stomach drop out as the ghostly pale man slowly, deliberately, turned his head and gazed towards him. Gansükh knew it was impossible, knew that there was no way, but nevertheless, he could feel it. Sinister was _staring_ at him. A feeling like having his hands dipped in ice water washed over him as Sinister glared with those burning red eyes, still deep and intense even at this distance and... Smiled?

"Die, _bogsnei amsar_," Gansükh whispered, and pulled the trigger.

As large as it was, the domed ceiling above their heads still echoed loudly with the sound of Gansükh's rifle firing, a flash of white-yellow light licking from the barrel like the breath of a dragon, the bullet making a zipping noise as it tore through the air, plummeting towards its destination. He steadied his grip on the rifle's stock and in a fraction of a second he had compensated for the weapon's jerking kick and re-centered his sights on Sinister's head, looking for the bullet's impact.

_Please_, he thought to himself, _Please..._

Gansükh watched as the bullet struck home exactly in the center of Sinister's forehead, snapping the man's head back, then forward again as the bullet exited the back of his skull, the spray of dark blood and brain matter jetting from his cranium with greater force than the entry wound. Sinister's face went slack, and his body crumpled awkwardly as his nerves twitched and his knees buckled. He lay on the bridge in a thin mist of vaporized blood and tissue and skull. He was dead before his body stopped falling.

The soldiers that surrounded Sinister all turned in unison, training their high-powered Gauss rifles in the direction of the shot. Gansükh knew that they had only seconds before they picked out the weather tower as the obvious origin of the attack and began firing. He saw the woman begin to shout orders at them as the other three mutant's heads darted back and forth, seemingly at a loss for what to do.

"Kill confirmed," Gansukh hissed into his microphone putting one hand on his belt, thumbing the safety switch for the CHBs, "Let's get the he-"

"Wait."

Gansükh looked at Rin. The Japanese girl wore and expression of what could only be astonishment as her milky eyes darted back and forth in their sockets.

"What?" he asked, "_What is it_? We've got about two seconds before-"

"_Wait_," she snapped, the forcefulness in her voice taking him by surprise, "Gansükh, _look_."

He stared at her for a moment, then rested his head back onto the stock of the rifle, looking into the scope.

"Oh god," he sucked in air between his teeth, "No... _No, no, no_!"

Sinister stood on the bridge exactly where he had fallen, his head a ruin of purple blood and smashed skull, he red eyes almost glowing now as his face contorted into a ghastly sneer. Gansükh's heart felt as though it would freeze as Sinister raised a hand and pointed at him.

Gansükh grabbed the bolt action of the rifle and chambered a new round, the spent shell jumping from the weapon and clinking onto the metal platform. He lined up a shot and pulled the trigger again, the rifle barking like a hound of hell.

Sinister raised a hand, and with blinding arc of energy, deflected the bullet, sending it streaking into the water behind him.

"What just happened?" Vascha's voice screamed in his ear, "Ambush, _what the fuck is going on_?"

Gansükh turned his head slightly and spat before cranking the rifle's bolt again, a new round sliding into place. He wiped the growing curtain of sweat from he brow and looked down the scope again.

"I wish I knew," he said, and fired again, "I damn well wish I knew."


	16. Helter Skelter!

Laura instinctively ducked her head as she heard the zip of another high-velocity round moments before it bit into the wood of the bridge only a foot away from her, splintering into hundreds of pieces as it hit the water beneath. A millisecond later, she heard the echoing crack of the shooter's rifle as it reached them. The bullet travelled faster than the sound of the gun firing, so for someone with less advanced hearing than hers, there was no warning when yet another bullet whizzed by. She crouched and pressed her back against the large beam of wood that supported the bridge's handrail. As cover it was next to worthless; A bullet would rip through the beam with minimal loss to its speed, but at least it obscured her from the shooter's line of fire. Not for the first time, she wished that her bones had been grafted with adamantium like the man she had been cloned from, rather than just the claws in her arms and feet.

"Get down!" she cried, though everyone was already way ahead of her. Ramrod dove to the floor of the bridge, the wood seeming to come to life and curling around him like a protective alcove, creaking in protest even as Ramrod warped its shape. George, while not in immediate danger from gunfire himself, still lassoed his arm around Hairbag's neck and dragged him into cover behind a tree, the feral mutant seemingly oblivious to the danger.

She looked where Sinister stood and felt an oddly acrid taste creep into her mouth as she beheld the disturbing shards that remained of his head. Even now, the flesh and brain matter and cranium were reassembling and regrowing, but that still left him with only about three quarters of what had been an intact skull moments ago. He glared in the direction of the attack, his eyes nearly afire with rage and pain as he stood, slightly crouched and in the open, as though he were daring the shooter to try again.

"What the hell are you all waiting for?" she shouted at the genome troopers, who seemed at a momentary loss for what to do, the rifles pointing at the source of the attack, but not firing, "Shoot!"

They obeyed, and the thick, deep, whip-crack sound of their electromagnetically-powered weapons began to ring out as they sent round after round towards the weather tower. Laura peered from behind her cover and cursed. It was simply too far, and the tower too high. She spotted the impact points of the trooper's shots as they fell drastically short of their mark, peppering the base of the tower uselessly and seemingly at random. While the troopers had proven themselves to be superb marksmen, there was simply no getting around the fact that the three-hundred yard distance that she gauged between themselves and their attacker was too much for their weapons to overcome.

"Is it SHIELD?" Ramrod shouted over the din of the Gauss rifles.

Laura turned that idea over in her head for a moment. That would be the most obvious culprit of an attack, but why, with all of their military might, would SHIELD send a single sniper team armed with only conventional bullets to assassinate Sinister? That made no sense.

"No..."

She turned her head to look at Sinister and saw him drop to one knee, clutching the side of his head in pain with one hand as he used the other to bring up a wave of kinetic energy that deflected another shot from the sniper, the thick, echoing, snapping noise of the rifle hitting her ears a fraction of a second later. Dark purple blood oozed from his mouth and nose and trickled from the hole in his forehead above the red jewel embedded there, but he seemed not to notice or care. Despite all of her disdain for Sinister and his plans, Laura could not help but feel concern for the man's life. She knew better than anyone how far he had advanced his ability to regenerate over the years, but he was pushing himself too hard; His kinetic energy casting used a great deal of stamina. Stamina he should have been saving for his healing abilities. Even now, Laura watched as the mending flesh on the back of his head began to slow it's regeneration as Sinister exerted himself more.

_Christ... _Laura thought, _There he is, ready to be put out of his misery, and all I can think of is how to save him._

"It's not SHIELD," he continued, blood distorting his speech slightly, making it a wet hiss, "I reached out, felt his mind... Felt him wanting to kill me..." He looked at Laura, "Just before he pulled the trigger, he thought of Wolverine."

For a moment, Laura did not understand, then slowly it dawned on her. She narrowed her eyes and set her jaw. In an instant, she was at Sinister's side, putting his arm over her shoulder and lifting him back to his feet. She turned to the Nasty Boys, who still cowered in their cover.

"George, Ramrod," she barked, "Take six of the troopers and take out that goddamn sniper! Get closer using the tree cover and bring that fucking tower down! Blow the bastard up if you have to!"

"Fuck that," Ramrod groaned, his Irish accent making the curse more a mash of harsh consonants than actual words, "An' fuck you, Laura! You take him out!"

"Go!" Sinister lifted his head, roaring and spitting, "Or I'll pull your spine out of your mouth!"

That seemed to settle the matter for Ramrod as he crawled to the end of the bridge, making sure we was well inside of the limited cover afforded by the trees before standing, cursing all the way.

Laura used a free hand to thumb the switch on the communicator nestled in her ear. "Genome troopers, all units, we're under attack! Scramble to the parkway immediately!"

She had never issued the troopers a direct order through their communicators, that had always been a task Sinister alone had enjoyed, and only hoped that they would respond to her demand. Spread out as they were on the various decks of The Ark, even the closest of them would not be able to reach their position for another few minutes or so.

Laura pointed at two troopers, then at Hairbag. "You three, come with me!"

Hairbag looked at her stupidly from his position behind a tree on the near end of the bridge, then looked at Sinister, then at George.

"Hairbag," George said, his tone now humorless and menacing as he began to move into the trees towards the weather tower with Ramrod and the six troopers, his body flowing and snapping like melting plastic as he did, "Do as she says."

That seemed enough for the feral mutant, and he trotted to Laura's side as she helped Sinister walk, eager to reach the end of the bridge where the trees would afford them some cover. The sniper seemed to have gotten the message that his shots were useless, and had stopped firing for now, but that did not mean that he would not train his sights on her. And Laura did not feel like getting shot today. The troopers moved in perfect synch, one walking several feet ahead of them, his rifle up to his shoulder, looking for any threat, and the other walked backwards behind them, wary of any attacks that would take them from the rear.

The command bridge of the ship, towering above them in the distance, was close, but not nearly close enough for Laura's comfort, and she pulled Sinister along with renewed vigor, the man snarling in pain. Thankfully, now that he was finished stupidly wasting energy, the mending on his head had begun to go into effect again, and the gaping hole in the back of his skull was nearly closed now.

"You warned me they'd come," Sinister said, grinning oddly as his strength began to return to him, "I suppose I should have listened."

Laura couldn't dispute that. While very few people had anything resembling an intimate knowledge of Logan's alleged 'secret disciples,' she knew enough not to doubt their existence, or the fact that they would come for Sinister eventually. At least half a dozen high-profile black ops and 'terrorist' attacks had been linked to them in some way or another, and the scope and efficiency of some of them sent waves of jealousy down her spine. But she had never imagined that they would come so damned soon. She had thought that Sinister's plans would at least be in full swing before they ever had to deal with this particular thorn.

"Then listen to me when I say shut up and walk," Laura huffed, still supporting a large amount of Sinister's weight as his body busied itself regenerating.

_Goddamnit_, she thought, _It had to be them. It just had to be now. It had to be the fucking Sons of Logan._

* * *

><p>"Vascha..."<p>

"I know."

"That should have..."

"I know."

"They said he couldn't survive..."

"I know, Ben! I know!"

Ben watched as, roughly a hundred yards in the distance, Sinister staggered along the path to the command bridge, supported by the young brunette woman and flanked by two soldiers and the mutant known as Hairbag, as his body tried to piece his head back together.

It was all wrong. Travis had briefed them at length on Sinister's mutant abilities. The healing factor, the enhanced reflexes and strength, the limited kinetic energy manipulation, all of it. They had been assured that a bullet through Sinister's brain was unsurvivable, even for him. Instead, they had watched in disbelief as the ghostly-pale man had risen up, his skull still smoking from the burns of Gansükh's bullet as it had burst and shredded the tissue, and lived on.

Ben had manipulated the earth of the parkway to form a kind of bunker in the freshly-lain dirt and sod and rock, where they had some form of cover and concealment. They laid on their stomachs, peering over the edge of the slope he had created, watching in growing disbelief as Sinister seemed to become whole again with each staggering step. With every moment that passed, their target grew a little smaller in the distance.

From the other side of the parkway, Ben heard the _chug-chug-chugging_ of Gauss rifles, but could not see the weather tower, obscured as it was by the trees that surrounded them.

"Ambush," Vascha pressed the microphone at her throat, "What is your situation?"

"Hostile," was the only reply the crackled in their ears. They heard the bark of Gansükh's QBU 88, and suddenly it seemed to Ben that there were not so many Gauss rifles firing.

"We can handle them," came Rin's soft voice.

"Get Sinister!" Hunter added, practically shouting into their earpieces.

"What's the play?" Ciara asked, her whole body seeming to shake with barely-suppressed energy as she stared at Sinister in the distance, clenching her powerful hands into fists. Ben knew that she was fighting extremely hard to function as part of a team, as she usually did when she was agitated or feeling aggressive. He was actually somewhat surprised that she hadn't already taken off to pursue Sinister herself.

Vascha worked her jaw for a moment, her black teeth grinding and the muscles in her neck bunching. Abruptly, she shimmied out of the heavy pack she wore and began pulling out equipment, while at the same time unzipping and shedding the outermost layer of her combat uniform, dropping some weight and freeing up some of the movement in her arms and upper body, though it did sacrifice some of her armor. She unslung her Scorpion carbine, checked the sight and hit the bolt, chambering the first round. Ben followed her lead, unslinging his own weapon and flicking the safety off.

"The play is the same as it was before," she said clipping grenades to her armored vest, slipping a revolver into a holster beneath her arm, and a pistol into another that sat across her stomach, "Sinister dies, even if we have to cut his head clear from his neck. We'll take out the others first, then finish him off."

"Now we're talking," Ciara grinned with an enthusiasm that Ben did not share. He knew he was not a coward. Hundreds of battles had proven that. But going into a fight with Ciara at your side could make you feel like one. Her thirst for battle edged on zealotry.

"We're got probably two minutes before more of those troopers start flooding this place," Vascha said, then looked at Ben, winking, "So let's take the express route."

Finally, Ben found something about the situation that he could smile about. "Coming right up."

He felt his senses begin to melt into the ground beneath them, his psyche attaching itself to the earth under their feet, becoming as familiar to him as his own hands. He could feel the entire expanse of the parkway like one could feel their own body. It felt good.

_Move_, he commanded, and the earth obliged.

He flexed his knees and Vascha and Ciara stood in a crouch as the ground beneath them began to swell like a wave in the middle of the ocean. With a smoothness and grace that seemed impossible, Ben contorted and twisted the dirt beneath them by sheer will into a solid wave of matter, gathering under their feet and propelling them forward, pushing aside rocks and trees as though they were toys. There was no great rumbling noise, not even a shuddering in their feet as he moved them on the wave of earth; Merely a humming vibration that Ben could feel in his spine and a rustling whisper like sand pouring from a giant hourglass. He pushed out both hands in front of him, and they picked up speed, crossing the distance between themselves and Sinister in seconds.

The mutant called Hairbag noticed the change in the terrain first. His pointed ears stood straight up as he stopped in his tracks, glancing around, searching for the source of the strange feeling in the ground beneath his hands and feet. The brunette woman was a close second. She whipped her head around almost in time to warn Sinister and the two soldiers. Almost.

Ben flung his hands upward, and the wave of dirt stopped suddenly, throwing Vascha, Ciara, and himself into the air with so much speed that it would have surely broken bones when they landed, had Ben not been there. His feet touched down first, and instantly he altered the properties of the dirt and gravel footpath to soften and slide as they landed roughly fifty feet from their targets, Ciara and Vascha rolling and coming up in attack positions. In one smooth motion, Ben collected up two bowling ball-sized spheres of earth and sent them hurdling at the troopers, connecting squarely in their chests and sending both flying backwards several feet and landing in a shower of dirt and dust. Almost instantly, they had begun to rise, but Ben had not expected to incapacitate them with that attack alone.

Sinister and his two followers seemed too stunned to form a reaction. They simply stared as the wave of earth behind Ben receded like and ocean tide.

"Fascinating," Sinister managed to say. His strange, otherworldly voice made all the more unpleasant-sounding with his mouth still marred with blood.

Vascha leveled her rifle and unloaded almost half a clip into the closest genome trooper who had been trying to rise to his feet, clutching his abdomen with one hand. The high-powered PhoenixBane rounds made a red pulp out of his chest in seconds. Ben similarly took out the other trooper, though he was slightly more conservative with his ammunition. Both men fell, their weapons clattering out of their hands onto the dirt path.

Sinister stood fully erect now, no longer leaning on the woman that had been supporting his weight, and glanced at the dead men to his left and right as though had no more significance to him than fingernail trimmings. The bullet wound in his forehead was now completely gone, the only evidence that it had been there at all was a smear of dark purple blood that had begun to dry and crust on his face. He crossed his arms over his chest and smiled, though there was no humor to be found in his red eyes.

"Amusing," he said, though clearly was not all that amused, "I honestly hadn't expected you."

Vascha did not reply, but instead pulled the trigger of her carbine.

_No, Vascha!_ Ben thought, _We need to take the others out first, while they're still waiting to be told what to do!_

The gun roared as she emptied her clip at him, but Sinister merely raised a hand, the rounds glancing off a red field of energy that emanated from his palm.

Ben fought the urge to look at Vascha, fought down the panic that he suddenly felt. Sinister had just blocked bullets that were s_pecifically designed_ not to be blocked by mutant abilities. He shot them an expression of disdain and annoyance.

"Your sniper had the advantage of surprise with his first shot," Sinister said, his tone of voice almost bored, "It has been so long since anyone has actually had the gall to fire a bullet at me, that I had nearly forgotten how to defend myself. An edge that you no longer enjoy." He raised his hand again, and it began to glow.

Ben reacted by instinct more than anything, slamming a palm into the ground, willing the earth in front of them to shoot up into a solid rectangular block, four feet high and nearly six feet thick. The blast of energy that Sinister fired from his fingers hit the structure with the force of a bomb, raining dust and gravel in all directions, and Ben had no doubt that it would have killed them instantly had it not been deflected.

Ben, Ciara, and Vascha dove, turned and pressed their backs to the block of dirt, huddling close in anticipation of another blast. When it did not come, Vascha ejected the clip from her carbine and slapped another in, chambering the first round.

"Fuck," she said simply looking at them both.

"Hairbag," Ben heard the brunette woman shout from over their cover, "Escort him to the command bridge. I'll handle them."

Ben had half a mind to peer out from behind the safety of the earthen block he had erected, but then he heard the sound of an energy weapon being charged, and pushed himself tighter against the hard dirt as a Gauss rifle began to thunder away at it, the smell of scorched earth filling his nostrils. For a moment, there was a brief lull in the onslaught, and Vascha stuck her carbine over her head and fired blindly over the top of their small bunker, but soon enough the Gauss' electromagnetically-driven tungsten rounds began pummeling them again.

Ciara cursed over the sound of the gunfire. "He's getting away! I can smell it!" she looked at Vascha, "You two handle this nut, I'll track the bastard down!"

Ciara looked almost ready to jump from behind their cover even as the barrage of gunfire continued to surround them, but Vascha grabbed her by the back of her shirt and pulled her back down.

"Wait," she snapped, then turning to Ben, "I need to see, Aretz."

Ben did not miss a beat, and almost without consciously thinking of it, a small, triangular pillar formed out of the ground by his right leg, near the outermost perimeter of the area protected by his dirt block. What he was about to try, he had not practiced in a long time, but it came back to him easy enough. He squinted in concentration as he fixed his attention to the small pillar, and began filtering particles out of it. Everything that was not pure sand (or, more specifically, silicon dioxide) was quickly pushed out of the geometric shape, causing it to shrink to roughly half its original size. Once that was done, Ben put his hands out in front of his body in a gesture of concentration, and began to push his open palms together, straining from the effort, as though there were some invisible block of clay between his hands that he was crushing. When he opened his eyes, the tiny pillar of earth had become flat, hard, and reflective, a small wisp of steam curling from one edge as the molecules settled. In one corner, a small crack had formed from the stress of the process, but that couldn't be helped. It was no easy task to make glass in mere seconds.

Ben grabbed the newly fabricated shard in a gloved hand, ignoring the extreme heat he still felt through the reinforced material, and looked at Vascha, nodding.

The moment he sensed a slight gap in the rain of tungsten rounds that still rattled the very ground beneath them, Ben lifted the piece of glass above his head and held it an forty-five degree angle, squinting to see in it's unrefined, pitted surface.

"To the right! By the tree line!" Ben shouted, and Vascha again put her rifle over her head, still firing blind, but now at least giving some direction to the wild spray of bullets. Ben watched in the reflection as the brunette woman dove into a dense group of trees as Vascha's rounds began to pepper the ground around her, scooping up the second soldier's fallen rifle as she did, dropping the first, whose ammo she had wasted firing at their dirt bunker.

Ben tossed the piece of glass aside and lifted his own carbine up and over the earth block, firing in the same direction as Vascha, keeping the woman pinned in her cover.

"Go!" Vascha shouted over the din, and Ciara leapt from the path into their forested surroundings, bounding like an animal uncaged, disappearing from sight almost instantly.

If the woman had seen Ciara depart, Ben did not know, but hoped that her departure had gone unnoticed. Vascha ejected another spent clip from her carbine and produced another from one of the many pockets on her person.

Ben cursed as a Gauss rifle began to rain down on their position again, and a round barely grazed the armor on his wrist as he fired over the block, nearly causing him to drop his weapon. He winced and shook his hand and he and Vascha pressed themselves hard against the makeshift bunker. Vascha looked at him, concerned.

"It's okay," Ben said, showing her the small gash in the armor plating around his arm.

But that wasn't entirely true. His arm was fine, but everything else? Everything else wasn't okay. The mission had already deviated wildly from their intended course, and they were not in the precarious position of choosing their path as they went along. Strategically, it was as far from 'okay' as things could get. And with each passing moment, it was getting worse.

* * *

><p>Hunter's eyes involuntarily shut for a split-second as Gansükh fired again, the loud rapport of the rifle as jarring as the sound of a tree trunk splitting.<p>

"Ambush," Rin said, still using the boy's codename as Logan had taught them to do during a mission, "You're wasting ammunition. He's knocking the shots away."

Gansükh worked the bolt action of his gun, the chamber spitting out another smoking, spent shell to join the small pile that was forming, and looked ready to ignore Rin's comment for a moment, his finger nestling onto the trigger again. Then he sighed and took his eye away from the scope, his face hard with frustration as he rubbed his forehead with a free hand.

"It was a perfect shot," he said, though Hunter could not tell if it was a statement or a question.

"Can you take out any of the soldiers?" he asked, squinting into the distance, endlessly bothered that he could not see what Gansükh and Rin saw.

The Mongolian boy put his face back against the stock of the rifle and looked through the telescopic sight, then grunted loudly in anger and annoyance.

"They've moved into cover, in the trees" he said, adjusting one of the knobs on the top of the scope and panning slightly to the left and right as he peered through it, his jaw clenching tightly "Sinister and the woman must have kept going down the path, but I can't see them anymore. If I hadn't panicked like that I could have-"

"You're no use to anyone in battle if you cannot keep your mind in the present," Rin said calmly, "Remember what Logan taught you."

Gansükh closed his eyes and took a long, deep breath before opening them again.

"You're right," he said, "I just-"

There was a loud crackling noise and a sudden shudder in the platform they laid prone on, making them all grab onto whatever was nearby as a sudden bout of vertigo struck them. Hunter leaned and peered over the edge. Almost directly below them, the mutants Gorgeous George and Ramrod had emerged from the cover of the trees into the small clearing beneath the weather tower, flanked by six genome troopers. The jolt the had felt was a round from one of their Gauss rifles as they fires from their position. The other troopers were soon to follow, and trained their weapons on the tall structure they had perched themselves on.

"Hold on!" Hunter managed before the platform began to shake violently under the assault of gunfire a moment later. The platform beneath them was several layers of steel and plastic and other materials that Hunter could not even guess at, so there was no real danger of being hit by one of the rounds from the Gauss rifles from this angle, but if they kept this up, sooner or later there'd by no tower left to hide in.

"Christ," Gansükh muttered, "They got here fast."

"Ambush," they each heard Vascha's voice rasp in their ears, "What's your situation?"

"Hostile," Gansükh said, and let out a noise that was half sigh and half growl. He pulled himself to the edge of the platform, letting a third of his body hang precariously from it. Pointing his rifle almost straight down, he did not even need to use his scope as he fired at one of the soldiers nearly three-hundred feet below.

Hunter looked over the side just in time to see the bullet strike one of them in the head, a small explosion of red popping out of the back of his helmet like a water balloon as he dropped. If that concerned the other troopers, they did not show it, and continued firing at the structure of the tower.

"We can handle them," Rin said, ever soft-spoken and calm.

"Get Sinister!" Hunter practically shouted over the gunfire below them that still shook and rattle their platform as the supports began to weaken under the barrage of sub-sonic rounds.

Ganükh pulled himself back onto the platform again just in time to avoid a shot that whizzed by his head.

"We can't hold this tower," he said, ejecting the spent shell, "They're going to cut it out from under us."

"Then we take it to them," Hunter replied.

Something seemed to catch Rin's interest, and she lifted her head slightly and emitted one of her high-pitched frequencies, waiting a moment for the sound to return to her sensitive ears.

"What is it?" Hunter asked.

"More of them."

He twisted his head to look in both directions down the far ends of the parkway. Sure enough, though tiny in his vision as they were, several more genome troopers were emerging from doors and passage ways. It was only a trickle of them, but it was only a matter of time before that trickle became a flood.

Gansükh saw it too, and made a face. Saying nothing, he reached into his backpack that lay beside him and being pulling out additional clips of ammunition for his QB 88, placing them in a neat row beside his rifle. Lastly, he produced two concussion grenades from his belt and laid them beside the ammunition.

"I'll stay here," he said finally, not looking at them, but making adjustments to the scope of his rifle, "If they manage to organize a decisive counter attack, we're done for. You two get down there, take out those goons of Sinister's, then go find that bastard."

Hunter wanted to protest, wanted to insist that they stick together, but before he could form the words, Gansükh picked up the grenades, pulled their pins, and dropped them straight down onto their unsuspecting enemies' heads.

"Go!" He snapped, then he was gone, his mutant cloaking field rendering him completely invisible. Up to this point, he had neglected to use it because he needed to be able to communicate with Rin and Hunter, but clearly that would no longer be a concern of his.

Below them, Hunter heard the boom of the grenades and caught the flash of blinding white light that burst from them. He heard Ramrod and Gorgeous George curse and moan in pain, and looked down to see all of them, the genome troopers included, doubled over, clutching their heads.

He turned to Rin, and saw that she was already unsheathing her katana, a look of grim determination on her oval face.

"I got your back, Un-hit-able," Hunter said, a small smile playing across his lips.

She turned her head to face him, her milky eyes oddly intense and focused, and nodded. "And I have yours, Zephyr."

Then she jumped.

Hunter followed close behind her, already extending his hands outward, harnessing the air around him in a burst of blue energy, a sudden and powerful gust rushing up at them to slow their decent. Even still, he did not take so much of the speed of their fall away to make them vulnerable as they plummeted, and they hit the ground hard, a small shock wave of air buffeting the two mutants and the genome soldiers away, sending them sprawling backwards, still blind and deafened from the grenades.

The soldiers were the first to rise, already it seemed that their senses were returning to them, and they grasped for the weapons that still hung from their bodies. They would never get that far.

Rin attacked first, cutting down the armor-clad man closest to her in one powerful downward stroke, cleaving him in two from right shoulder to left hip, a torrential spray of blood gushing from the the split torso. Hunter found himself nearly struck dumb for half an instant. The swords that Rin wielded were gifts from Madam Yuriko, that much Rin had admitted, but whatever they had been forged from was nearly as sharp as Logan's claws. She had sliced through the soldier's high-tech armor as though it were made of paper. Rin turned to face her next foe, her sword held in front of her at a forty-five degree angle. Hunter marveled, not for the first time, how well she observed her traditional fighting stances even in the heat of battle.

Hunter entered his own engagement, his hands glowing blue as he made a sweeping gesture at the genome trooper closet to him that send a powerful gust of wind into the backs of his legs, taking his feet clean out from under him. For an agonizing moment, the air that Hunter controlled left the man hovering horizontally above the ground, then Hunter raised a hand high, forcing the molecules of the air to bend to his will, and struck the man full in the chest with a blade of wind. It did not have the devastating cutting power of Rin's new swords, but it accomplished the same task; The wind blade plunged into the soldier's chest and slammed him to the ground, his solar plexus crushed and cut into pieces by the force of the impact.

"Next!" Hunter shouted, suppressing the odd thrill that he sometimes felt at the beginning of a fight. It was giddiness and aggression and elation mixed with a touch of primal, instinctive fear, and it was not entirely unpleasant.

Two genome soldiers, now seemingly fully recovered from the effects of the grenades, leveled their powerful Gauss rifles at him, ready to fire. Hunter had no intention of letting them. He grabbed the rifles with invisible limbs made of pure air, and yanked them straight upward. One of them was wise enough to shrug out of the strap that kept the weapon attached to him just in time, letting the gun soar into the air, but the other did not think so quickly, and kept his grasp firm on the weapon. Hunter gathered the air underneath the man and pushed with all his might, sending him flying through the empty sky under the massive domed ceiling, his hands flailing out desperately for purchase that was not there. Hunter did not bother to watch where he landed.

Out of the corner of his eye, Hunter saw Rin cut clean through the end of a soldier's Gauss rifle, and the weapon backfired as the man pulled the trigger anyway, sending shrapnel burrowing into his masked face and launching him backward with the force of the small explosion. Remarkably, the man rose to his feet, still smoking and covered in burns, and dodged Rin's killing strike.

The soldier that Hunter had relieved of his gun drew a long, wicked-looking combat knife from his boot, and faced him in a low crouch, the knife held in a reverse grip in his right hand, his left balled into a fist as he edged closer.

Hunter assumed his own martial stance, an odd hybrid of a variety of styles that Logan had taught him, part Karate, part Ju-Jitsu, part Tai Chi, part boxing. His hands began to glow blue again, and thin wisps of air swirled around his arms, ending in points terminating four inches from the end of his fingers.

Hunter had expected the knife first, but the soldier surprised him with a driving knee that he barely managed to absorb by crossing his hands in front of his chest. Then the knife came, slicing at Hunter's throat in a quick, deadly arc, the soldier trying to take advantage of the fact that he had leaned forward to take the force of the knee. Hunter jerked backward and tried to use an air blade to push the knife from the man's hand, but his grip was too firm. They broke off and backed away from each other several paces, and began to circle.

_Fast_, Hunter thought, oddly impressed by the faceless man's combative prowess, _Really fast_.

Hunter struck first this time, launching a blade of air that the soldier barely dodged, then closing the distance, driving a fist into the masked, helmeted face that snapped the man's head backwards. It hurt to strike the hard armor that encased the soldier's head, even through the padded glove that he wore, but Hunter's hand bones were dense and hard as rock from years of sparring and endless drilling, and the pain was little more than a side note in his brain. He made a grab for the wrist the wielded the knife, and caught it in a firm grasp. He held the man's wrist with all his strength, ducked and twisted, coming up behind the soldier, meaning to sink the blade into his back, but found that he could not. The man had put his other arm behind his back and used it to block Hunter from pushing the knife and farther forward. Had as he tried, Hunter could not overcome the genome trooper's strength.

_Strong,_ Hunter observed, though his admiration was giving way to frustration, _Really. Goddamn. Strong_.

"Hell with this," Hunter whispered, and a gust of air shot them both straight up a hundred feet in a second. Hunter used the man's sudden surprise to pull the knife from his grip, used his hold on the man's arm to swing him in a dizzying arc, and released, sending a blast of wind that rocketed the soldier back to the ground with tremendous force. Hunter hovered there for a moment, held aloft by a gale, then dropped, holding the knife out in front of him as he descended in a dive. He landed with almost all of the speed of his fall on the soldier's chest, driving the blade into his neck with so much force that it pierced the other side and pinned him to the ground. The man flailed for a moment, then lay still.

A shadow fell over the ground out of the corner of Hunter's eye, and he sprang to his feet, fists raised, a gale of wind already curling around him, ready to strike, but he relaxed instantly when he saw that it was Rin. She made a downward cutting motion with her katana in one hand, and a long ribbon of blood sloughed off of the blade onto the grass. Behind her, the last genome trooper, the one that had been burned by his weapon's backfire, made a moaning, grunting noise as he uselessly tried to pull his entrails back into his body through the long gash she had opened in his abdomen. Across Rin's face, there was a dark red smear that matted her black bangs to her forehead.

"Are you alright?" he asked, gesturing at her face.

Rin reached a hand up, felt the wetness, and made no motion to clean it off.

"It's not mine," she said simply.

There was a sudden wet, sucking noise, rhythmic and distinctive, and both Hunter and Rin turned to face it. Several dozen yards off, the mutants called Gorgeous George and Ramrod stood. George was clapping his hands together in mock applause, but his viscous, shape-shifting skin made it sound more like someone slapping raw steaks together.

"I had figured they'd run away," Hunter said to Rin, though loud enough for the two mutants to hear him.

The purple and black oil stain of a man that was called George snorted derisively.

"'Course not, boyo," Ramrod sneered, "We were just wonderin' when you'd be done playin' about and ready for a real fight."

"I will remember those words," Rin pointed her katana at the black-haired, Irish mutant, "When I collect your head."

Ramrod seemed at a loss for a moment. He had clearly not expected the petite Japanese girl to speak with such venom, and it caught him off guard. His brow furled into a tight latticework of wrinkles that had come from a lifetime of frowning and anger, and he reached into his long leather coat, producing a small cylinder of wood. As if by magic, the wood suddenly telescoped, doubling, tripling in length until it was the height of Ramrod himself.

"I want her," the Irishman said, snarling and pointing his staff at Rin.

George let out a cackle that sounded more like someone blowing bubbles in mud. "I always had a thing for the little yellow gals myself, but be my guest."

Rin did not wait any longer. She rushed at Ramrod with quick, tight strides, her sword trailing behind her in her hands, ready to deliver an upward cut that would cleave Ramrod up the middle. Hunter had seen her do it before, many times.

Ramrod smiled as she approached, and began twirling his staff in his hands, spinning it so fast that it became a circular blur as he arced it back and forth from one side of his body to the other. When Rin was within ten feet of him, there was a sudden _whooshing_ noise and Hunter barely glimpsed one end of the staff suddenly grow longer in Ramrod's grip. He swung it, aiming for her temple. Rin sensed it at the last possible moment, and tried to duck and lean and let the staff pass over her head, but she was just barely too late, and the hard wood glanced off of her cheek with a harsh crack. Rin did not fall, but managed to hold her balance and continue forward, spinning, twisting, dodging the staff as it swung around her, closing the distance between herself and Ramrod, and bringing her sword up in a long, sweeping arc.

Ramrod tried to block the cut with his staff, but the blade was too sharp, and coming too fast, and Rin severed the long wooden pole neatly in twain. She would have cut clean through his face, but the small resistance offered by the wooden staff had been just enough to slow her hand by the tiniest fraction, and the tip of the sword missed his nose by a hair's width. Ramrod curse and leaped back, bringing the two pieces of wood together and merging them back into one by sheer force of will. He pointed the reformed staff at her, and it suddenly extended, rocketing at her almost too fast for Hunter to see. Somehow though, Rin seemed to have anticipated the maneuver, and had already drawn the shorter wakizashi in the other hand. As the pole shot towards her head, she crossed both swords in front of her, sweeping them forward again and again as she advanced, cutting chunks out of the staff as Ramrod again and again tried to punch it through her defenses and impale her on it.

Hunter was not so caught up in their battle that he did not hear the vile, sucking noises that Gorgeous George produced as he advanced on him, a distorted, leering grin plastered on his face. Hunter was in no mood to humor the big shape-shifter, and made a gesture at him with a open, glowing hand. A wall of air shot towards George that would have sent a small car end over end, but George simply laughed, and hundreds, maybe thousands of tiny holes formed in his body, allowing the gale to pass through him easily.

George snorted, spat a greasy gob of purple phlegm, and launched a fist at Hunter that doubled in size as it streaked through the air at him like a rubber ball on an elastic string. Hunter bent the air around him into a razor-thin blade and sent it to meet the approaching fist. The wind split the massive hand down the middle, cutting through it as though it were string cheese. But no sooner had the two halves of George's hand separated did they twist in the air, recombine, and continue on their course straight at Hunter's head.

Hunter managed to block half of the blow with an arm, raising it to defend himself as he would with any other strike, but it was like deflecting a hundred pound water balloon, and the forced still caught him partially in the face, sending him sprawling back. Almost instantly, he was back on his feet, his cheek stinging and beginning to swell from the hard impact.

He began to throw wave after wave of bladed air at George, each less effective than the last as the shapeshifter contorted and shrunk and bulged to dodge the onslaught, getting closer with every oily step with slick, lumbering strides.

Finally, Hunter gathered all of his strength, settling his body's energy in his stomach, just bellow the navel where his center of gravity resided. With a wordless shout, Hunter summoned all the air that he could gather in the immediate atmosphere and threw it at George with as much speed as he could muster. The gale traveled with so much speed that George did not have time to alter his shape, and it caught him square in the chest, splitting him completely in half down the middle with a thick, wet sucking noise.

For a moment, the two separate halves of George's face were caught wide-eyed in surprise, and sat unmoving. Hunter breathed a sigh of relief, the exertion of his last attack causing him to pant slightly as he tried to suck in oxygen. Then, slowly, the two halves of George fell back together with all the grace of a dead fish hitting a dock, and the line between them mended and disappeared, rendering him whole again.

George smiled, spat again, and once again began to advance on Hunter, one oily hand reaching out towards him.

"You're in trouble now, son," the big mutant said, his purple and black teeth dripping purple and black ooze.


	17. Ark in Blood

_**Hi readers,**_

_**So, it's official. The Sons of Logan saga will be three separate 'books.' What you have been reading will be henceforth referred to as 'Book One: Terminus.' And like I said, we're still a long way from Book One being over.  
><strong>_

_**...Which means I'm essentially locked in for a long haul on this one. I don't know how long it it will take, but I'm willing to see it through as long as there's interest in these characters and this story. All I can say is that I'm having a blast so far, and I'm glad you guys are enjoying it.**_

_**Hori out.  
><strong>_

Quiet as death, Gansükh pulled the trigger on his rifle, the usual rapport of the weapon made completely silent by his mutant cloaking field. So hushed was the shot, that Gansükh could actually hear the distinctive whisper of the bullet as it left the sound-dampening barrier and broke into the open air with a smooth hiss of splitting atmosphere.

He watched through the scope as the bullet arced downward in its trajectory and hit another genome trooper below the breastbone. The exo-skeletal armor he wore would deflect most small arms and nearly any blade, but not the armor-piercing rounds that Gansükh had brought along on the mission. The man faltered, stumbled, and fell, clutching his stomach in pain. Gansükh frowned and made a small adjustment on the scope. He had been aiming higher. He had no sympathy for these genetic science projects that served Sinister, but shots that did not result in instant death were unprofessional, messy, and frankly, below his skill level.

Gansükh worked the bolt of the rifle, loading a new round into the chamber, the shell becoming suddenly visible as it flipped through the air, clinking on the metal surface of the platform, rolling, then softly coming to rest amidst the quickly growing pile of spent brass-colored cylinders. The smell of burning powder was becoming thick within the cloaking bubble, and the heat that had begun to radiate off of the rifle's barrel and chamber was starting to make his brow sweat, but it was all familiar to him. He quickly glassed the Northern entrances to the parkway and spotted another trooper jogging through a sliding door. The soldier made it several paces into the grass before he noticed the growing collection of his fallen brethren that lay still and bleeding on the ground, and only realized too late that he had entered Gansükh's killing field.

Gansükh slowly exhaled, and squeezed the trigger, the rifle jerking firmly into his shoulder as it silently fired.

This shot was better. It entered the man's head by his cheekbone, punching through the armored mask with little effort, the round splintering as it bit into the bone of his skull, the shards ricocheting through his cranium, shredding brain matter. He was dead before he even began to fall.

As he ejected the shell, Gansükh quickly shifted his body to face the other direction, glancing at each Southern entrance for any more soldiers that might be making their way to the battle. He had not been able to get all of them, but still, many bodies littered the ground at either end of the parkway. Since Hunter and Rin had left, he had counted maybe twenty-five new genome troopers entering the fray. Where they came in ones and twos, Gansükh had had an easy time dispatching them. But some came in groups of four or five, and he could only tag a couple of them before the others realized what was happening, and ran for the cover of the trees that dotted the landscape. Out of that twenty-five, perhaps ten were now stalking the parkway, out of Gansükh's sight, searching for a fight to join.

They wouldn't have to look hard, Gansükh knew. While the battle happening below him between Hunter, Rin, Ramrod, and Gorgeous George was mainly hand-to-hand and relatively quiet save for the odd shout or the sound of Hunter's wind manipulation, far in the distance he could hear the thunderous roar of carbines and Gauss rifles. The sound was strangely reassuring. At the very least, it meant that Ben and Vascha were alive. Ciara's well-being was not so easy to keep track-

A sudden deep, ursine roar bellowed through the parkway, and Gansükh grinned. Ciara, it seemed, was doing fine as well. At the very least she was alive and fighting, and that was a usual situation for Ciara to be in.

He spotted movement at one of the Southern entrances, placed his eye to the scope, found his target and fired. Quick as lightning, he worked the bolt, took aim, and fired again. Two more troopers fell as they ran. A third made his way to cover. Gansükh cursed under his breath. He thought he might be able to get that one as well.

He shifted again, the muscles of his abs and back and neck beginning to protest at the constant crawling on his belly, but it couldn't be helped. He had hundreds of thousands of square feet to keep track of, and every trooper that he took down was one less that the others would be forced to deal with later. It was a job made especially more difficult when he was faced with shots where he did not have time to make an accurate judge of distance, and had to fire without making proper adjustments. He put his eye to the scope and glassed the Northern perimeter and saw...

Gansükh furrowed his eyebrows and twisted a knob on his telescopic sight. He took his eye away and looked with his own natural vision at the sloping grass far in the distance that he had dotted red with bleeding bodies.

_That can't be right_, he thought, looked again through the scope, and began to quickly count.

He counted twice more to be sure. There was no doubting it. There were four fewer dead genome troopers laying on the grass than there had been mere minutes ago. Those with shots to the brain still lay still and most assuredly dead, but the few that he had hit in the chest and the stomach... Those were gone, leaving only dark stains on the grass where they had fallen, the ground already drinking up the blood that had been spilled.

Gansükh faltered a moment, unsure of what to make of that. Certainly, death was not always instantaneous when a bullet pierced the body rather than the head, but he had watched each soldier fall, seen his rounds tear through armor and break the bones and rend the soft tissue of their torsos. Even with their body armor, there was no disputing that his shots had hit their mark. If they had not died outright, they certainly were not going to be getting up and walking around any time soon. And yet... that was exactly what had happened. Or so it would seem.

There was a sudden movement, and Gansükh put his eye to the sight.

_What the hell..._ he whispered silently to himself.

The genome trooper that he had shot in the stomach near the solar plexus was stirring. His legs seemed to buckle and spasm, and he still writhed in pain, but slowly, inexplicably, the man slowly made his way to his feet, gathering up his fallen rifle as though compelled by some relentless, invisible outside force. Dark blood still flowed freely from the gaping wound in his stomach, but nevertheless, the soldier began to make slow, deliberate strides further into the parkway, one leg dragging slightly.

Gansükh did not let him get far, and put another round in him. This one flew straight and true, striking the soldier in the head, the force jerking his head around and spraying bone and armor and blood in a full three-hundred-and-sixty degree arc before he fell. He could not explain how the man had survived the first wound, but shot in the head was shot in the head, and you didn't get up from that.

_Well,_ a voice in the back of his head reminded him, _Most people don't, anyway_.

Gansükh gave a sour expression and pushed the thought from his mind.

He sat for a moment, contemplating this new development. Looking in either direction for new enemies entering the battle and finding none at the moment, he dropped his cloak and pressed the microphone as his neck.

"Black," he said, "This is Ambush. Do you copy?"

He heard no reply, save for the vague hiss of ambient static that the radio frequency made in his ear. In the distance, he heard another blast of gunfire.

"Black," Gansükh began, then reconsidered, "Or_ anybody_ who can hear this. Watch your backs. There's something... wrong with the genome troopers. Make sure you shoot them in the head. Can anybody hear me? Whatever you do, aim for the head. ...Or cut it off. Or crush it. Whatever."

No reply came, and Gansükh sighed in irritation. The short-wave radios that SHIELD had provided them with were as old as any of the equipment that they themselves had brought along on the mission. There was every chance that no one had heard him at all if the radios weren't functioning properly. Or they had heard him, and were too preoccupied to respond. Neither possibility sat well with him.

Gansükh remembered their lengthy series of briefings aboard the Helicarrier well, and while the data available on the genome shock troopers had been less that comprehensive, he certainly would have remembered if someone had mentioned that Sinister's troopers were ghoulish undead creatures beneath that armor, who could only be dispatched with shots to the head like an old zombie movie.

_Another top-notch piece of intel from the brainiacs at SHIELD_, he thought to himself bitterly, the sight of Sinister rising up after being shot clean through the head coming back to him. A small wave of anger flowed over him. _I'll find out whoever fucked this whole thing up, and when I do..._

Gansükh clenched his jaw for a moment, his teeth working back and fourth as he tried to take Rin's earlier advice and keep his mind on the task at hand. She was right, of course, whatever had happened or was going to happen didn't matter. He had a job. A duty. And he needed to focus.

He saw moment in his peripheral vision, and turned his rifle, putting his eye to the scope and reengaging his cloak.

He inhaled...

Exhaled...

Fired.

* * *

><p>Rin's entire world was a flurry of sound as she spun, twirled, flipped, and brought her swords down again and again on Ramrod. She had him on his heels now, she knew. She could hear his panting breath, the increase in his heart rate, and even as she again just barely managed to dodge the swing of her katana, she knew she could defeat him.<p>

The sound of Ramrod's staff extending, retracting, growing and reshaping in his grip was subtle, but she knew it now, and no matter what he might try to do to keep her at bay, she cut through his weapon with the ease of cutting through paper. She did not even need to use her ability to produce high-pitched sounds to use her echolocation. Every step she and Ramrod took was enough to paint a picture in her mind of their surroundings as the tiny echos bounced off of the trees and rocks and bushes around them.

She was backing him up slowly into a tree. Ramrod had tired, and no longer even made an effort to keep his staff spinning in a baton-like manner as he moved. He now carried it outstretched, as though it were a spear or a lance that he might keep her at bay with. She held her swords with the same firm but relaxed grip that she always used, the sharkskin of the hilts dissipating what little moisture there was on her palms. She held the katana at a forty-five degree angle in front of her, pointed roughly at Ramrod's eyes, while the shorter wakizashi she held slightly elevated over her left shoulder. It was a traditional kendo stance for wielding two blades, and what it lacked in 'flash,' it made up for in practicality and effectiveness.

Ramrod's back hit the trunk of the young oak, and he feebly extended his staff yet again, with almost half of the previous speed and power that he had originally. Rin knocked the attack away with the flat of her katana, then cut through almost a third of it, sending a section clattering to the dirt. Ramrod grumbled wordlessly in frustration. She had grown weary of cutting through his magic stick, though she guessed that if there were some limit to the amount of manipulation that he could perform on a single piece of wood, he was fast approaching it.

Without a word, she closed the distance between then and plunged the wakizashi into the meat of his shoulder. It sunk in easily and pierced his bones with so little effort that he may as well not have had them, and then proceeded to cut into the oak tree. The sword only stopped when the hilt's round collar met Ramrod's body, effectively pinning him to the wood behind him.

Ramrod's face twisted and contorted severely, and a growl of pain turned into a full-blown scream as she sunk the whole length of the blade into him mercilessly. Rin released the hilt of the short sword and took a step back. Immediately, Ramrod grasped at the handle, but it was too deeply embedded and the pain too much for him to bear pulling it out on his own, and shuddered at the pain of trying. Rin had made sure to insert the wakizashi with the blade facing downward, so that he would not be inadvertently freed if he were to pass out and rest the weight of his body on an upward-facing edge, which would surely slice through his shoulder and collarbone with ease.

Rin reached out to him with the tip of her katana, resting the point under his chin and using it to direct his head up to face her. Even with so light a touch, a small trickle of blood ran down his throat from a cut that she did not think Ramrod even noticed.

"You chose your opponent poorly," she observed, remembering his words as she had promised she would.

Ramrod laughed, winced with pain, and spat on the ground at her feet. "Yeah," he said in his thick Irish accent, "Enjoy it while you can, girl. Which, incidentally, will only be the next fifteen seconds or so."

For a moment, Rin did not comprehend. But then, she heard the rustling, and realized with growing alarm that, in the heat of her battle with Ramrod, she had echolocated in several minutes, relying on the ambient noise that the Irish mutant produced to map the immediate area around her. Spinning, she shot out a burst of high-frequency noise, but knew before the sound returned to her a millisecond later what she would find.

Four genome troopers had stepped out from the cover of the trees and stood in a semi-circle, their rifles trained on her.

* * *

><p>Hunter staggered backward another step and sent another blade of air at the advancing George. He worked his jaw in frustration and fatigue as the shape-shifter did not even attempt to evade; So weak was the attack that George could simply walk through it, mending the small hole it made in his greasy body in mere seconds. George approached him slowly, lazily, both of them knowing that he was toying with Hunter, that he could easily close the distance between them in moments.<p>

Hunter's knees felt weak beneath him. He had rarely been called upon to use his powers this much in the past two years, and it was taking a toll that even he could not have anticipated. His palms were damp with sweat, and his body armor felt as though someone had poured about a half a gallon of water down the back of his collar.

"Run," George snickered, that familiar distorted grin making a purple gash in his face, "Why don't you run, boy? This'll be no fun at all. I'll have to go find your slant-eyed girlfriend after I'm done with you to get any sort of thrill outta today. Provided Ramrod ain't used her up."

He threw his purple head back and laughed. And laughed. He laughed so hard and so long at his own humorless jibes that he actually began to cough a little from the strain. Still grinning, he beat his own chest with a massive, greasy fist and coughed up the last of the irritation in his windpipe. He snorted, and spat another bullet of dark phlegm into the grass, and continued to step towards Hunter, once again extended a hand to grab at him.

Inspiration came to Hunter suddenly and without warning. Something about the way George had coughed had sparked a flame of insight, a weakness that Hunter had not recognized before. He silently chided himself for thinking so unidirectionally, for only addressing the battle with one solution. His abilities could bend the air into a devastating offensive weapon, that was true enough, but there was so much more that he was capable of, and sometimes simply forgot to put into practice.

_If he needs to cough,_ he reasoned, _He needs to breathe._

Hunter found a new reserve of strength, feeling it course through his body from his spine to shoulders. Once again, he resumed a fighting stance, but this time placed emphasis on his Tai Chi lessons. He spread his feet wide, made his back loose but straight, and lowered his shoulders, holding his hands out in front of his body in a relaxed configuration.

George did not seem to understand the significance of the stance, and simply raised his large fists up, ready for another attack that he seemed sure Hunter was about to launch at him.

"That's the spirit," he laughed.

Hunter ignored him, shut him out completely, and began to move. His body began to shift and pivot and gyrate, each joint making perfect circles in their motions. His hands began to circle each other as though they were caught in some chase that had no clear end. Slow at first, then picking up speed. He felt his whole body begin to radiate, and everything around him seemed to glow blue.

And then the wind started to pick up.

He imagined the air was liquid, that he held his hands in some great vat of water, and was using the movement of his hands and arms to produce a swirling vortex. Small at the beginning, but growing larger and faster with each passing second. He felt the air around him begin to twist and crack and whip about him, but he kept his feet planted firm, and refused to be moved.

He opened his eyes and saw George hesitate slightly, his last step only half as long as the one that came before it. His tar-like brow furrowed as he felt the air picking up speed around them. The bodies of the genome troopers that lay strewn about them began to shift as the pressure of the wind began to push them along the ground. Bits of dirt and dust and gravel began to fly through the air and pepper George's body, though he seemed to barely notice as the particles disappeared into his viscous body.

"What the hell are you-" George began, the slightest touch on concern on his voice.

Hunter did not let him finish, but again drew all of his strength into the pit of his stomach and then directed it outward, pushing his hands out in front of his body as though he were trying to force down some invisible wall before him. The vortex that had begun to rage around around both of them jolted violently, and in a swirl of ambient blue light, suddenly contracted, placing George at its center. The sudden shift in the atmosphere made a resounding noise almost like thunder as the air around Hunter rushed to fill in the space that had been left.

Again, Hunter began to move his hands in their circular pattern, with more speed and force than he had ever dared try. He could see George snarling, shouting something at him, but the cyclonic gale had begun to roar with power, and all other sound around them was drowned out instantly. George tried to raise a hand, tried to push his large hand through the cylinder of wind that he was now trapped in, but the moment his fingers came in contact with the twirling wall of air, it shredded the tips off of his oily fingers, and he recoiled. Hunter knew that it hadn't hurt him, but that wasn't the point of the prison he had created for George.

With a final push of mental energy, Hunter took all of the oxygen that inhabited the small space that George was now trapped in, and removed it.

Almost instantly, the shape-shifter's eyes widened, and he grasped at his throat as even the air in his lungs was sucked out, and the small area became a vacuum devoid of any atmosphere whatsoever. His dark, reddish purple irises darted back and fourth in anger and panic as he quickly realized what Hunter had done. His body began to react to like lack of air pressure in strange ways; Tendrils of tar-like ooze began to snake from his body, flailing and scraping against the boundary of air that Hunter closed even tighter around him. George fell to his knees in a silent splash of his own body that seemed to have lost it's sense of shape, and he doubled over, searching for oxygen that was not there.

Hunter did not know how long it was took for a mutant like George to asphyxiate, but he did not think it would be much longer than any normal man. He ground his teeth from the strain of maintaining the vortex at such a high speed for so long, and forced himself to press on.

_A little longer_, Hunter pleaded with his fatigued body, _Come on, just a little-_

Over the roar of the wind, Hunter did not hear the second attacker that snuck up on him, slipped an arm around his neck, and began to choke him.

* * *

><p>Ciara's senses burned with information as she powered through the cultivated forest of the parkway. She ran in a low crouch, occasionally using her hands to assist in her movement as she proceeded, knocking aside the small saplings that still had not grown into full-blown trees in the limited time since they had been planted. Sinister's scent was unusual, vague, and difficult to pin down, but the feral mutant he traveled with, the one called Hairbag, had an odor to him that was so palpable that she could practically taste it in the back of her throat, and she followed it.<p>

Far behind her, she could still hear the rattle of Ben and Vascha's carbines as they engaged in their firefight with the brunette woman. The logical part of her mind had lamented leaving her teammates behind, but the savage, animal part of her had a thirst for brutal vengeance that would not be distracted or thrown off course. Truth be told, she had never liked the plan when it involved killing Sinister at a distance. That was what SHIELD wanted, not what Logan's memory demanded. She did not imagine that Sinister had killed their mentor from a distance, from silence, from shadows. No, Sinister had looked Logan in the eye when he died. She felt that with a resolute certainty in the pit of her stomach. And she would be more than happy to return the favor.

There was a break in the trees ahead, slivers of bright light coming into view. The map of the parkway she had committed to memory had shown her that the path curved and snaked lazily through the forested park. If you did not want to trail blaze through the dense underbrush between the wooden foot bridge and the tower that held the ship's command center you had to stick to that path without fault. She had cut straight through a patch of trees that, if she was lucky, would place her on the gravel and dirt path before Sinister, where she would be able to ambush him again. All she need to do was keep on Hairbag's-

Ciara slowed to a trot and sniffed the air with quick, deep breaths, raising her head high, then crouching down low, her face practically in the dirt.

_Damn_, she thought. The parkway, while still an enclosed area, was large enough that an artificial atmosphere was contained within, and while the air was relatively still, there was a slight breeze as the barometric pressure fluctuated between one area of the dome and another. It had just shifted, putting her upwind, and no longer able to track Hairbag with the pinpoint accuracy that she had been relying on thus far.

Still, it did not change anything. All she needed to do was wait within the cover of the trees and-

At the last possible moment, Ciara caught it, a vagrant trace of Hairbag's scent on the air. Her mind was instantly afire again as it gathered the information, processed it, and gave her conscious brain a set of data to interpret. She knew where Hairbag was again.

She moved on pure instinct, diving and rolling as the small, fur-covered man dove from the tree above her and landed where she had stood only an instant earlier, his wicked claws that had been meant for her back burying themselves into the soft earth. He looked up at her, his eyes a study in blind rage, and hissed, spittle flying from between his yellow, pointed teeth.

"Where is Sinister?" Ciara demanded, but did not count on an answer. She doubted this man had much use for speech anymore. He was more animal than man; Everything about him, including his scent, told her as much. Still, he wasn't completely inept. And she was willing to bet he could damn well point. She did not think that Sinister would go the rest of the way to the command bridge unescorted, which meant he was somewhere close.

Sure enough, Hairbag did not respond apart from a sneer and a growl, and leapt at her, claws outstretched, aiming for her throat. Ciara caught both of his wrists easily in each hand, drew her head back, and smashed her forehead into the feral mutant's nose. She heard and felt the satisfying crack of his nose breaking, and felt his hot blood on her scalp as she turned and swung him into a nearby tree. Hairbag howled in anger and pain as he fell.

"I'm going to ask you again," she said, both hands balled into fists at her sides, "_Where is he_?"

Hairbag staggered to his feet, blood flowing freely from his shattered nose. He seemed to falter for a moment, and looked as though he might fall again, but balanced himself with a clawed hand on the nearest tree, his senses seemingly thrown askew by Ciara's attack.

She reached out to grab him by the front of the filthy, ragged shirt he wore. A mistake.

Too late, she saw the glimmer in his eye, the slight tug of a smile at the corner of his lips, and Hairbag snapped at her faster than she could draw her arm away, closing his teeth around her wrist and clamping down so hard he might have snapped the bones if not for the leather band around her arm that offered some protection from the bite. Still, his wickedly sharp teeth pressed down, pierced flesh, and sliced muscle.

Ciara roared in pain, the deep, bellowing sound more akin to a bear than a teenage girl. She tried to wrench free, but Hairbag had her tightly in his jaws. He began to jerk her this way and that, the flesh of her wrist tearing a little more with each movement, and he raked her arm and stomach with his claws like a rabid beast. The armored vest she wore protected her body, but within seconds her arm was a bloody mess of thin, stinging cuts that bled freely.

Instinct took over again, and Ciara abandoned all pretense of technique and fighting style and tactics. She lunged forward, ignoring the screaming pain in her wrist as it twisted in Hairbag's mouth, and bit down on his face.

For a moment, all she could feel was the coarse hair against her tongue, and feared for half an instant that she had found purchase on nothing but fur. But as she bit down harder, she felt the resistance of muscle and flesh. She felt Hairbag try to pull away, and she used her free hand to grab the back of his head and hold him close, even as she felt his claws again raking the skin of her arms. With a final burst of muscular power, she felt the flesh between her teeth give way, and she twisted her head, tearing it free.

She felt the jaws on her wrist loosen slightly as Hairbag let out a muffled shriek. She let go of his scruff and quickly jabbed him in the throat, and she was free. She pushed him backward and leapt in the opposite direction.

She had bitten him on the cheekbone, just below the eye socket. There was a neat, round scoop of flesh grotesquely absent from his face, and he reached a hand up to feel the emptiness where once had been the skin and muscle of his upper jaw. He shot her a look of pure hatred, his face and mouth now almost completely soaked in blood, both his and hers.

She returned his stare and spat the hunk of flesh as him. The small, wet, blood-covered wad landed at his feet. She took a moment to look down at her wrist. It was not as bad as she had feared, but two of her fingers felt numb and useless, and seemed not to be able to curl when she made a fist. Her healing factor would fix it, as it did all injuries, but her abilities to self-repair paled in comparison to Logan's. It would be some time before the arm was fully mended. She felt wetness from her ampits to her fingertips on both hands, and looked at the latticework of slashes that ran down her limbs, almost completely soaking them in blood. Still, those injuries were superficial at best, and no great cause for alarm.

Hairbag leapt at her again, and Ciara guessed that he was at least smart enough to be anticipating that she would grab for his wrists again. She did not plan on getting her hands close enough to his mouth for him to bite her a second time though, so instead she kicked one leg up in an almost perfect one-hundred-and-eighty degree arc and brought the heel of her boot up into the bottom of his jaw. Before he could reel back, she brought her foot back down with nearly identical force, this time the heel of her boot crashing into the top of Hairbag's head. He fell face down into the dirt, groaning, nearly unconscious from the force of the blow.

The smell of his blood and sweat was so thick in the air that it nearly choked Ciara. His foul, panting breath was like a musk of bacteria and whatever unfortunate animal he had recently eaten. For good measure, she kicked him twice more, once in the flank near his kidney, and once in the face. Chips of his teeth shot from his mouth, and the feral mutant balled up into a fetal position, a growl of grudging submission emanating from his throat.

Ciara made an irritated face as the radio in her ear suddenly crackled to life. It was Gansükh. She listened long enough to discern that he was calling for Vascha, and then clicked it off.

She felt safe enough now to bend down and reach for Hairbag, his disorientation and injuries were clearly not being exaggerated this time. She put one powerful hand around his throat and lifted him up off of the ground. He was at least a foot shorter than her at his full height, and she held him aloft, his feet kicking weakly at empty air. She was rather surprised at how heavy he actually was. His small frame was packed thick with dense muscle.

"Where is he?" she hissed, and swiftly kneed him in the ribs, "I know you can understand me. _Where_?"


	18. Vendi Vidi Defui

**_Hello reader,_**

**_Sorry it's been awhile between updates. The real world beckoned. Hopefully the chapters should come faster soon._**

**_Hori out._**

Vascha's nostrils had begun to burn from the thin, acrid smoke that belched from the chamber of her carbine as she slapped in a new magazine and chambered the first round. The entire weapon radiated heat from nearly a minute of relentless fire, and the tips of her fingers tingled as she gripped the stock and barrel, lifted the weapon above her head, and fired blindly over the bunker of earth and rock that Ben had created.

There was a pause, and then the thick thundercrack of return fire from the brunette woman's Gauss rifle. Vascha gritted her teeth and pressed her back to the cover as she was showered with dirt and debris. She felt a deep rattling from the base of her spine to the back of her neck as the onslaught sent a residual shockwave into the ground.

"I can't keep rebuilding like this," Ben said breathlessly as he placed his hand to the dirt bunker and repaired the extensive damage that had been done to their cover from even that short salvo.

"You can't track her?" Vascha asked, knowing that Ben could, in some situations, use his abilities to sense people's footsteps.

Ben shook his head, "Not with this much ambient vibration. Besides, I think she's up in a tree now. Those last couple shots came at a downward angle."

"Great," Vascha grumbled, and took a moment to consider their options. They had probably only another minute or so before Sinister's reinforcements arrived. They certainly couldn't stay here in the middle of the park's causeway, hiding behind a block of earth while being shot at, but any attempt they made to move from their cover had been met with a blast from a Gauss rifle.

Suddenly the radio in her right ear crackled with life, and Vascha put one finger to the device to more clearly hear.

"Black, this is Ambush," she heard Gansükh's voice in her ear, "Do you copy?"

She put her fingers to her throat to click on her own receiver to respond, but before she could, another blast of rifle fire ripped through the dirt bunker right beside her head, tearing chunks loose and raining down on her with explosive force. Vascha ducked and turned, shielding her face in Ben's shoulder as the debris nicked and bit at her exposed skin.

Vascha's right ear had gone deaf to everything save for the lone humming tone that seemed to sit somewhere inside of her inner ear canal. She worked her jaw and winced as a pinch of electricity stung the cartilage of her ear. She reached up and pulled the ruined radio piece from its perch on the side of her head and discarded it.

Ben was firing around the corner of their bunker, almost oblivious to Vascha as she nudged him lightly on the arm. Impatiently, she resorted to pinching him roughly on the neck.

"Ouch!" Ben yelped and rubbed at the skin around his armor's collar, "I'm a little preoccupied, Vas'. What is it?"

"Did you catch the end of Gan's transmission?"

"Something about the genome troopers. He says aim for the head."

Vascha puzzled over that for a moment, then shrugged and, shouldering her carbine, leaned over their cover and fired into the trees where it sounded like the Gauss rifle bursts were originating.

"I guess we'll just have to keep that in mind."

* * *

><p>Hunter struggled fruitlessly to find a point in the Genome trooper's armor that he could exploit to break the soldier's tight grip around his throat, but his mind was racing as it screamed for oxygen, and it was all her could do to keep his feet beneath him. He beat at the arm at his neck with balled-up fists, but each attempt was slightly weaker and slower than the last as his vision began to darken and bright points of white light began to sparkle in his peripheral vision.<p>

Gorgeous George was free from the air prison that Hunter had made for him. Try as he might to maintain it in the forefront of his mind, Hunter's control over the atmosphere deteriorated completely if he could not breathe; A vulnerability that he had guarded his entire life. The swirling vortex of air that suffocated the shape-shifter fizzled out almost instantly, and George had collapsed to the ground, coughing and sucking in air with wet, slurping gasps.

Desperately, Hunter tried to use the waning strength in his legs to push himself and the trooper backwards. Rather than force the man off balance, however, his heels slipped in something slick and rubbery in the dirt under his feet, and the sudden and drastic shift in weight made both Hunter and the trooper topple over backwards. For a moment, Hunter imagined that he might be freed from the man's impossibly tight choke hold, but no. Even through the hard fall to the dirt, the trooper maintained his grip, and Hunter's mind pleaded more desperately still for a solitary breath.

_What did I slip on,_ he found himself wondering idly, and forced himself to look at the ground between his sprawled feet. What he saw... Did not make sense at first.

He had slipped in a small pile of what looked at first like grey worms covered in some red jelly, but quickly Hunter realized that they were bunches of small intestine that even now hung from the man's stomach that held him in the tight choke. Hunter looked down at the arm around his neck and saw burns, shrapnel and blood dotting it's surface. This wasn't some new soldier who had entered the fight. This was the man that Rin had gutted and left for dead.

_That doesn't make sense._

George had regained enough strength to return to his feet, and now stood over Hunter and he struggled to breathe against the choke-hold.

"You're more trouble than you're worth," the big mutant growled, his throat still scratchy and irritated from the lack of oxygen. He looked at the genome trooper that was pinning Hunter to the ground, "Break his damn neck."

Hunter was dimly aware of the faintest sputterings of a transmission from the radio in his ear. He struggled to hear it over the sound of the blood roaring through his head as his vision went almost entirely dark, but he managed to catch bits and pieces. It was Gansükh.

"Or _anybody_ who can hear this... Wrong with the genome troopers... Whatever you do, aim for the head..."

Hunter glanced once more at the pile of intestines that coiled and slithered over the ground as he struggled feebly.

_Now he tells me._

* * *

><p>Ciara jabbed Hairbag in the stomach, causing the fur-covered man to suck air in a gasp, jerking him awake again after he slipped into unconsciousness for a second time. She was nearly ready to give up on the small feral mutant and leave him to bleed on the dirt of the small forested patch of land, but she tried again.<p>

"Where is he, you little scumbag?"

"I'm here, Ciara," answered a voice immediately behind her.

The blood was so thick in the air that Ciara had never even caught the slightest whiff of Sinister's illusive scent. She dropped Hairbag like a sack of garbage and began to turn to face the source of the voice, already balling her uninjured hand into a fist to deliver a haymaker, but she was too late, and too slow. All she saw was the bright red flash, and felt the sudden impact glancing off the side of her head like a baseball bat made of fire. Her vision exploded with white light as the attack sent her flying backwards, her skull feeling as though it had been set ablaze. The pain in her head was so intense that she barely registered her body crashing awkwardly into the trunk of an oak tree, the wood nearly splintering with the force of her full weight slamming into it. She heard several cracks and snaps, but could not be sure if it was her body, the tree, or both.

As she fell to the ground on her stomach, her face sinking into the loose dirt, her senses returned to her in a rush, as though a sudden fog was being lifted. Though the new injuries that flared pain into her mind made her wish it hadn't. She could smell her own burnt flesh and hair, the scent thick and rank in her nostrils. Her right eye was either injured, glued shut with blood, or not there at all. She couldn't be sure. Her breath came to her in sudden ragged bursts as she became more acutely aware of a stabbing pain in her side and back as she inhaled. Broken ribs, most likely. Maybe a ruptured disc. Muscular tears without question. She tried her best to remain calm, objective, and composed while she assessed the damage she had received, but her unconscious mind was screaming in rage and agony and, yes, fear. Her head felt suddenly very heavy, and she fought to keep her left eye open.

_Don't black out,_ she thought to herself. Though, in her still-reeling mind, the voice was more like her mother's than her own. _Ciara Monetti, do not black out. Do not black out. Do. Not. Black. Out._

She felt her hands involuntarily balling into fists and relaxing again, clawing slightly at the soft earth as she attempted to access the part of her mind that knew how to use them. She was grateful when she tried flexing the muscles of her legs and felt them respond, but even that small miracle came with a hefty price tag of pain in her spine and lower back. A wave of nausea suddenly washed over her, and a sheen of boiling hot sweat seemed to creep up her spine and neck. Her vision in her working eye was like bad reception on a vid screen. The focus went in and out, and occasionally was entirely dark, like someone closing the shutter on a camera.

_Dark... _she thought, why did that seem important? It was almost frustrating how uncooperative parts of her mind were being as they recovered from the intense shock. What the hell were _in_ those red bolts of energy Sinister launched from his hand?

_Dark... Black... _There was something itching at her conscious mind, something that she needed to do.

_Black..._

_Vascha!_ She had to call for help. She had to call for Vascha.

Her hand seemed to move at a speed that was impossibly slow as she tried to reach for the radio on her throat. Finally, she touched the switch on the device and pressed it.

"Black..." she said, though the word came so soft and weak from the back of her throat, she was not even sure if she'd said it at all. She slowly licked her lips, tasting blood and dirt, and tried again, the words coming out like the noise of a creaking door hinge. "Vascha... I need... help."

She felt footsteps nearby, hard and heavy, and was dimly aware of someone standing over her. She felt the toe of a thick, heavy boot working its way underneath her shoulder and roughly pushing her over onto her back. Her spine and ribs and head screamed with pain, and despite herself, she inhaled in a choking, stuttering gasp that was almost a sob as agony roared through her body.

"Your radio is broken," a deep, silky voice said that, despite all of it's refinement, hit hear ears like scratching nails on a chalkboard, "Did you not notice?"

_Do not black out. Do not black out._

Ciara forced herself to turn her head and gaze upward with her good left eye. Sinister stood above her, his arms folded behind his back like a military officer. Despite the bloodstains, his suit was still almost perfectly pressed. The frown he wore was almost like disappointment rather than anger. She reached up at him with one arm, but her muscles seemed not to know what speed meant anymore; She felt as though they were moving in slow motion as she clawed at the empty air where she thought he might be. Her depth perception was shot, though, and her outstretched fingers found no purchase. She felt a booted foot gently but firmly push her hand back down into the dirt, and she fought off another long wave of darkness.

"You have spirit," he said to her, but at the same time seemed to be conversing with himself "I will grant you that. I don't believe any of you have yet fallen. I put a great deal of faith in those who serve me. Perhaps some of it was... misplaced."

There was a moment of silence, and Ciara heard the barely audible click of an in-ear comm turning on.

"All units," she heard him say, "This is Sinister. I would like the attackers taken alive if at all possible. I believe we will find a use for them."

A pause, and then, "Yes, Laura, of course I am. When have I ever _not_ been serious?"

He sighed and she heard the click as he turned off his comm.

"Go... to hell," Ciara managed, and noticed for the first time that her mouth had filled with blood. It spurted from between her teeth as she spoke, and she almost gagged as some of it trickled down her throat.

She heard Sinister's horrible dry laugh as another dark wave rushed up over her, and this time she could not stay afloat in the sea of blackness. Slowly, her vision went dark... And then, like a blanket soaked in ice water, nothingness wrapped her up and smothered her.


	19. Way of the Sword, Way of the Gun

_**Hello readers,**_

_**It's been awhile (again). Hope you'll forgive me, but it was the good kind of absence, the kind where I wasn't updating because I was busy, rather than just disinterested. I intend to have a few more chapters up soon to add to the ongoing saga.**_

_**Hori out.**_

In the space between reaction and decision, Rin exploded in a flurry of movements. A blur of black body armor and glinting metal.

She was keenly aware of the fact that Sinister's foot soldiers were now at least vaguely cognizant of her blindness and the keen hearing that served to replace her sight. There was no hiding the opaque quality of her almond-shaped eyes, nor the vacant stare she had often been accused of harboring, but there was no way they could have guessed just how finely tuned the organs in her ears had become over the years, and there was no way they could have known that, at this distance, she could hear Sinister's command through their in-ear radios as though the man himself was standing directly beside her. They'd been ordered not to kill her, or any member of their team. Suddenly her situation was not nearly as hopeless as it had been mere moments ago.

She also considered the hasty and semi-garbled transmission she had received from Gan. The point and purpose of which she had not been able to discern, but one aspect of the message had been clear; Aim for the head. She did not know quite what to make of it, but she trusted Gan's judgement as much as any teammate's. As much as her own.

Rin had paused only a fraction of a second, but in that instant, a torrent of information was fed to her senses. Heartbeats, breathing, small movements of musculature and equipment. She felt the barrels of their devastatingly powerful rifles lower by just millimeters in hesitation as they received their orders from Sinister. As quietly as she could, Rin flexed the unnatural muscles of her throat and emitted a short burst of echolocation, so slight that it was probably no louder than the chirp of a small bird. Like a flash of light, or what she imagined light looked like, the area around her lit up in a deluge of what passed for her as sight. There was nothing that she could miss. No distance or object or single blade of grass that she did not hold in her mind at that moment. It was then that she struck, moving like a girl possessed.

Without looking, without needing to, she reached behind her and drew her shorter wakizashi unsympathetically out of Ramrod's shoulder and the tree trunk she had pinned him to. Before the Irish mutant could scream, before her could even crumple to the ground, Rin was in motion again. The four troopers that had surrounded her faltered for a moment, seemingly unsure of how to obey Sinister's orders and defend their own lives simultaneously. One brought up the stock of her rifle and moved to sidestep her incoming strike and bring the weapon down on the back of her head.

These soldiers were fast, and Rin had learned very quickly to respect that about them, but their thick, cumbersome suits of armor made their movements exaggerated, ponderous, and just slow enough that Rin could anticipate nearly every move they made. They may as well have been moving in slow motion. As the soldier began his maneuver to outflank her, she redirected suddenly so that she approached him head-on. With powerful downward strokes from both swords, creating a bright 'X' of gleaming, polished blades as she cut through air, then armor, then flesh, she severed the man into four quarters. His head, arms, and lower torso dropped to the ground and sprayed dark blood and fluids into the air. Rin rankled her nose as the stench of bile and partially-digested food rose up out of the pile of gore that had been a man seconds ago. Keeping Gan's earlier warning in mind, she brought the katana down in a long slash and neatly separated the front of the helmet, skull, and brain from the severed head and neck, sending the piece of cranium skittering across the grass.

In the same series of movements, without even stopping her arcing sword arm, Rin took advantage of the momentary shock instilled in the next trooper closest to her. He tried to raise his weapon to guard himself from her oncoming swing, and in any other situation, the heavy metal and plastic of his rifle would have been more than enough to block the cut. This was not any other situation, and the adamantium hummed eagerly as it bit into the gun, offering only the slightest resistance before tearing through it, and then through its owner's neck. So clean was the cut that the head, still in its heavy layers of armor and visor, leapt upward from the man's shoulders by several inches and spun in the air like a top before dropping and hitting the ground with a wet thud, followed by the body and pieces of rifle. Rin felt the heat in the tips of her toes as a veritable wave of blood spilled from the newly headless corpse, washing over her boots.

After such a brutal display of violence, Rin had anticipated that the remaining two troopers would instantly revert back to their original, lethal intentions. She had expected the click of their rifles, and her muscles had tensed in preparation for the dizzying acrobatics should would need to employ to evade their onslaught. Instead, to her complete surprise, both men slung their gauss rifles and drew from their belts what seemed to be riot control-style metal canes, which telescoped to a length of about four feet. Each man flicked their wrist, and suddenly a crackling noise emanated from the hard, round ball that punctuated the ends of the thin clubs.

"Stun canes?" she heard Ramrod shout as he tried to stem the flow of blood from his shoulder, "Have you lot gone senseless? Shoot that bitch!"

_He didn't hear Sinister's command_, Rin made a mental note, _He doesn't know that they've been ordered to incapacitate us._

She regarded the two soldiers cooly for a moment, then raised her swords and made a beckoning gesture.

_Poor, loyal fools,_ she thought, _And they call_ me _blind._

There was a sudden movement, an unfamiliar noise behind her and Rin turned her guard suddenly to face Ramrod again. He remained slumped against the tree, but now one hand rested on the rough bark of the trunk. The tree groaned and shuddered grotesquely under his touch, and Rin had only a moment to curse in her native tongue under her breath. Ramrod made a sound from deep in his throat that was somewhere between a chuckle and a snarl.

"I'm gonna make a pincushion outta you!"

As though it were made of liquid rather than hard oak, the young tree sprang to life, tendrils of wood spraying from the trunk, the branches, and even the roots beneath her feet, darting at her like snakes, each tipped with a wicked point. Rin backstepped, dodged, and began cutting at the tendrils faster than most people would ever dare move the their lives. Wood particles rained down around her like sawdust as she struggled to defend against the assault, cutting, slicing, and hacking with every step. Each and every aspect of her long, hard years of training under Logan's tutelage sprang to life in her unconscious mind, and she became a spinning tornado of blades, never even daring to consider what might happen if Ramrod were to succeed in finally impaling her on his creation.

For all the strengths that Rin had learned to muster out of her physical disability and mutants gifts alike, she was not omniscient, however, and the whipping, crackling noises of the tree's long tendrils, and the sound of her swords cutting air and wood with equal ease clouded her hearing just enough that, when the stun rod struck her over her back and shoulder, it came as a genuine surprise to her. It was a stupid mistake to ignore the two remaining soldiers, even for a moment, and the burning shame of being struck was more palpable than any injury she had felt in a long time.

Cold and brittle pain surged through her body as the powerful shock that came with the cane's blow traveled up and down her spine. One arm seemed to turn to mush, and one knee buckled as the synapses in her brain forgot how to function for an agonizing moment. Then, with a whoosh of air that she barely registered, another blow from a stun cane caught her along the temple and jaw, and for the first time in years, Rin was truly blind again, as though someone had tossed a handful of thumbtacks into the delicate machinery of her senses. She hit the ground on her side, and felt a hot line begin to draw over her forehead and blood trickled from the split skin of her scalp.

Despite the spasmodic sensations in her back, there was a sudden urge to curl up into a ball when Rin suddenly realized that the electrical shock had caused her ears to ring so terribly that she could no longer detect the world around her based on echos. The primal, adolescent fear that gripped her unwillingly made it hard to think, hard to feel, hard to even remember who or where she was. The world was all nothingness again, just as it had been when she was a child. But this... This was much worse. More than just a clouding of the senses, more than just a loss of hearing, it was as though someone had stolen from her her very concept of the universe and the way of things, crushed it up into a ball and thrown it into some bottomless pit.

She did not hear when one of Ramrod's tendrils found her, but she felt it bite deep into the flesh of her calf, effectively pinning her to the soft ground. Rin opened her mouth, and felt the noise of her scream deep in her throat and chest, but still the ringing would not subside, and she could hear nothing. Another blow from a stun cane struck her below the breastbone, and another wave of bitter pain made her spasm and twitch as she sucked in air inside the empty void that had become her world. Her head began to swim, to sink into the nothingness, and a strange, numb, distant sensation washed over her.

And suddenly... The years were gone. The Ark, the troopers, Ramrod, even her team. Gone. She was back in Japan, in the first years of her training with Logan, barely more than a girl. Logan had escorted her to the dojo, but when she entered the familiar room, she had been stunned with it's suddenly unfamiliar quality. The floors, the ceiling, and the walls had been densely padded with acoustical damping material. Sounds and echos traveled mere inches before the insulation of the room effectively quashed them. In the dojo, she was suddenly blind again.

"What's the matter?" Logan had asked when she hesitated upon entering the padded dojo, already the resonant frequency of his voice sounding distorted and unnatural as the sound waves dissipated and died barely outside of his mouth.

"I can't hear echos in this room, Sensei," she had answered truthfully, as she always did, "I can't see in here."

"But you can still see me, can't you?"

She pointed her head towards him and let out a small chirp from within her throat. It was true. Even though the image the echos painted in her head wasn't nearly as vivid as what she was used to, there was a hint of a sketch where her master stood.

"Yes," she answered.

She heard a grunt of affirmation from her master, and then heard him producing something from within his robes.

"Not for long," he said, and she heard him pressing something, some button on a device, "Your objective will be to avoid my attack. Understood?"

Without waiting for her reply, he clicked on the small device in his hand, and the world was suddenly a mess of white noise. Loud, deafening, encompassing white static filled the small room, invading her ears like an army of insects. She felt her heart begin to thump in her chest as she turned her head from side to side almost involuntarily, her ears seeking some respite from the din.

"Focus," she heard Logan's voice, though it seemed as though it were many miles away, as though he were calling to her through a snowstorm, and she was suddenly aware that he was shouting in order to be heard, "Remember what I've taught you. You are more than a pair of ears attached to a head, Echo. Do not let one disability burden you with more. If you rely on your ears to ear _and_ see, you are doomed to failure if anyone ever learns to use that against you."

Rin nodded and forced herself, _made herself_ begin to calm down. She deepened her breathing, let her body relax, and sank down into a defensive posture, her hands held out in front of her body. She allowed her bare feet to settle into the padded floor, testing her footing. She cleared her mind of the numbing whiteness that roared in her ears, and tried to sense where her master was. She felt her eyebrows furrow as she concentrated, straining her hyper-acute ears to cut through the wash of static.

The first attack she never felt coming. Without warning, hard, calloused hands were around her wrist, the bones and muscles of Logan's hand squeezing her thin arms with such force that she knew there would be bruising. He pulled her off of her center of gravity and sent her sprawling across the room, letting her use her training to correct her trajectory and land in a roll, rather than a heap.

"You're still using your ears," Logan snarled, though still seemingly miles away, "Feel the air, Rin. Smell it. Taste it. Everything you need to find me is at your disposal right now. Every enemy you engage, no matter who, no matter where, you must dive into their minds and sense everything about them. Their breath, their heat, the air that is disturbed when they move quickly, and the currents they disrupt when they stand still. Feel it, Rin. _Feel_ where I am."

_Feel it, Rin..._

With a jolt, the present came crashing back into place. Her ears buzzed, and the world was dark to her, but she was back on The Ark. Pain sang symphonies throughout her body, and she realized with a sudden dread that both of her hands were missing the familiar touch of her swords. The nothingness that comprised her world sent another thrill of anxiety through her, and her heart felt as though it were in her throat.

With every ounce of strength and self-control that she could muster, Rin began to systematically shut down the cold, fearful places in her mind, crushing down the doubt and pain and fear into small, manageable packages.

_Your pain will wait for you,_ she reminded herself, _Your mind is needed elsewhere._

The world began to take shape then. Not in the vivid, mental drawings that echo-location gave her. Her world was now sensations, feelings, tastes and smells that began to create an environment. Just as Logan had taught her.

She felt something near her head. She felt the hard, hissing breath of a soldier's respirator on her neck and smelled the sterile odor of processed air from the mask the trooper wore. She realized with a strange, sickening sense of violation that the genome trooper was smelling her.

Her hands were free.

She grabbed the head the hovered just inches above her face.

In many ways, she had abandoned the super-sonic shrieks that she could muster with her precise, superhuman vocal chords and lungs. It was not a precise attack, and caused as much harm as it did good in many cases; The sound was deafening to her teammates and tore through her surroundings with the subtly of mortar fire. Logan had taught her to love precision, and though he had never told her not to use her most destructive mutant ability, her screams were anything but precise.

None of that applied now, and nothing stopped Rin from drawing in a painful lung of air and screaming with every fiber of her being. She pulled the trooper's head in close.

She felt the helmet and skull beneath her fingertips practically cave in on themselves from the devastating power of her acoustic attack. Blood and chunks of skull rained down on her as portions of the man's head began to break down and pulverize into wet sludge. She felt a hard jerk as the body dropped dead over her, the rush of blood from the mangled stump where his neck had been pouring over her throat and chest and seeping into her armor, hot and wet.

She felt her vocal chords burn from the exertion, and coughed so hard she nearly gagged. She had not done that in a very long time.

She felt a footstep nearby, her back pressed to the ground making an effective receptor for vibrations. Rin gritted her teeth and, faster than any normal human would be able to track, she reached into the armor over her chest, felt the sturdy hilt of the knife-sized tanto pressed against her ribs under the carbon fiber plating, and pulled it from its sheathe, throwing it in the direction of the footstep in one swift movement, the wooden tendril that pinned her leg creaking and pulling sickeningly against the flesh as she twisted.

There was no way to know if she hand hit her mark, and for a moment, Rin had allowed herself to believe that she had missed with a sinking dread. Suddenly, the hard thump of knees hitting the dirt, and the upper body that followed it. Against her thigh, Rin felt another pool of hot blood forming in the grass.

Rin waited for a long moment, each second that passed adding to her growing tension in anticipation of another attack. Ramrod was injured, that was true, but he was still dangerous, and she was sure that the second man she'd hit was a trooper, and not Ramrod himself based on the weight of the body that had fallen. Every fiber of muscle, of sinew, every tendon itched and hummed as she lay perfectly still, feeling every movement of the air and ground around her, waiting for the telltale sign that an assault was incoming.

Slowly, the ringing in her ears began to fade, and Rin found that her ability to echo-locate had begun to creep back into existence, like a slowly rising sun. Slowly, deliberately, Rin allowed herself to rise, the deceptively thin muscles of her arms bunched and corded as she pushed the weight of the dead man of off her and to the side. Blood and ruined flesh from the man's head sloughed from her neck and shoulders.

Ramrod was gone. Run off into the sparse forest of the parkway. She thought maybe she could hear him trudging through the trees maybe fifty yards away, but her ears still felt as though they'd been stuffed with cotton and sealed in wax. She tried to rise and was sucker-punched with pain in her calf. She had nearly forgotten about the tendril of wood still buried there.

To her left and right, Rin could sense her swords, and thankfully leaned to grasp the hilt of the wakizashi. Her dexterity returning to her, she severed the wooden spike in her calf from the long limb it had sprouted from. She fought down a wave of nausea as even the slight vibration on the wood from her sword sent a shockwave up her leg. Biting her lip, Rin grasped the wooden stake that still impaled her limb, and pulled with all of her might.

She bit back a scream as the wood freed itself from her flesh. What was most likely only a fraction of a second seemed to stretch into hours until finally, with one last twist and pull, the spike slid out of its temporary home in the meat of her leg. She sneered at it and tossed it aside into the grass.

In the distance, Rin heard the roar of gunfire, and immediately cocked her head to triangulate the precise source of it. It had originated where she'd left Hunter and Gan. She recognized the unique rapport of it. It had been one of Gan's weapons.

Her training took over then, and in mere moments, a casual observer would never guess that she had been injured at all. She stood with her back straight, equal weight on both feet, wiping the blood from her swords on the hard cloth of her pants, replacing them in their scabbards, wiping blood from her face and neck with her hands, and then walking over to the last trooper she had dispatched, bending over and yanking her tanto from where it had imbedded itself in his head, splitting the respirator he wore almost in half. A portion of his helmet fell away as she turned then, sheathing the short blade beneath her armor again.

Something stopped her, though. Without fully comprehending why, she turned back to face the dead trooper that had lost half of his ghastly mask. The features of his face were soaked in blood and brains, but still, there was something about...

In the distance, an explosion cracked like thunder, and even several hundred yards off, and under the cover of the trees, Rin felt the gust of warm air from the chemically-induced fire.

Forgetting the dead soldier entirely, Rin turned and broke into a run as she maneuvered through the trees. Pain began to creep up her leg, but Rin pushed it back down into the dark corners of her subconscious.

_Your pain will wait for you,_ she thought, _Your mind is needed elsewhere_

* * *

><p>Not for the first time, Gansükh considered the fact that, in another life, he could have been a hunter of animals, not people. He could have carved a living out of the Mongolian countryside as his ancestors had done for generations. In another universe, he could have been a plain, respectable young man with a family who never had to kill anything that he didn't intend to eat. In a world that made any kind of sense, he would not be perched on the weather tower of this hellish super weapon, listening to the sounds of battle below, and ignoring the very real fact that every burst of gunfire, every explosion, every hiss of an energy blast, might spell death for one of his comrades.<p>

The moment passed, the thought disintegrated, became vaporous, Gansükh exhaled and squeezed the trigger of his rifle, and another Genome Trooper died. His brain exploded out of the back of his helmet, everything he thought and felt and did or would do going with it. Gansükh cleared the spent cartridge, wiped a bead of sweat from his brow, and glassed the parkway for what seemed like the hundredth time.

It was no good anymore, though. Genome troopers were now pouring into The Ark's parkway faster than he could put them down. Perhaps if they were approaching only from one end of the massive ship... But they weren't, and the the constant shifting and scanning was costing him too much time, and giving many of the troopers just enough to slip into the cover of the tree before he could get a bead on them.

_That's it,_ he thought, dropping his cloak and pulling his aching shoulder away from the rifle's stock,_ I've done as much as I can do from up here._

He regarded the veritable hill of bronze shell casings that had accumulated around his body, the hot, sulfur smell of burnt powder thick in the air. He made a quick mental count and sighed, slinging the rifle onto his back. The rifle's ammunition, including the PhoenixBane rounds, was nearly depleted.

Fortunately, his sniper rifle was not the only weapon he had brought along. Far from it. Rising into a crouched position, he collected the heavily modified AK-47 that rested nearby and chambered the first round. As weapons went, it was ludicrously dated, but Gansükh had yet to come across any modern variant of the Russian-born rifle that could take the same amount of abuse as a well-manufactured AK. He checked the various sidearms and grenades that he had affixed to the armor he wore and clicked the radio at his neck back on.

"Zephyr, I'm on my way down. Any chance of a little fast descent from you?"

He waited a moment, heard only static, and tried again.

"Zephyr, it's Ambush. I'm sitting on my hands up here, man. What are you-"

He leaned over the end of the weather tower's platform and stopped mid-sentence. There was a very good reason that Hunter was not replying. Two, actually; Gorgeous George and the trooper that held Hunter in a choke hold on the ground far below. Gansükh watched in growing horror from his clear vantage point as other troopers who had not been properly dispatched also began to rise up from the pools of blood they had come to rest in, their wounds slowly mending themselves, making the soldiers whole again, bit by bit. It would be mere moments before Hunter would be overwhelmed, even of he did break free of what looked like a very firm chokehold, and Gansükh had neglected to set up his rope-descent gear. He looked at the steel ladder welded into the side of the tower, which he and Rin and Hunter had used to climb to the top, but that would take almost as long as setting up his descent gear. Too long. He let out a long hiss of air from his nostrils, curling his features in irritation.

Almost by reflex, one hand made a move to unsling his sniper rifle, but he stopped himself. Hunter was laying almost entirely upon the trooper that was holding him on his back. Hitting the trooper at this angle without hitting Hunter would be impossible, even for Gansükh's skill set. He could shoot George, but what would that do besides remind the slowly-reviving soldiers below that there was still a sniper on the tower? Regardless, he had serious doubts that bullets were anything but an annoyance to the shapeshifter.

He looked down again at the gelatinous mutant, Gorgeous George and slowly worked his jaw in grim determination as he made several swift calculations in his head.

_Don't even think about it, _ a voice in his head protested, _At this height, you're looking at broken ankles, even of you stick the landing._

Then again, the alternative was watching Hunter, his teammate, his friend, die slowly.

Gansükh had not prayed to anyone or anything in a long time. It came back to him easily enough as he murmured a short prayer in his native tongue. At the very least, he would die with thoughts of home on his mind. He made one last check of the weapons strapped every which way around his body.

And then he jumped.

For one horrible moment, his mind and body reeled in panic at the sensation of free fall, but quickly enough his training took over, and time seemed to stretch and slow down as he regained his composure, twisted his body, and began to make microscopic changes to his angle of descent.

It was not the most irrational thing he had ever done, but it did come close. From the height of the platform, he would almost certainly be killed if he missed his mark, his neck or back broken by the impact, his skull fractured against some unseen rock.

But, as a rule, Gansükh did not miss.

His falling body collided with Gorgeous George with a sound like a wave breaking on a rock. He felt the mutant shapeshifter's body buckle and swell beneath him as it attempted to absorb the kinetic energy of his fall before it gave way and burst entirely, as though he had smashed a balloon of water under his fist. Still, it reduced only a fraction of the force of his impact, and he hit the ground hard and awkwardly. His body armor absorbed some of the force, but he felt the air leave his lungs with a painful thud in his back and chest. Pain seared through his shoulder as he felt the joint pop and dislocate and he suppressed a grunt as he tried to find his bearings as quickly as he could.

George's body was spread out all around him in the grass like a huge oil spill, but already he could see and feel the mutant trying to bring himself back together, shocked as he was by the force of Gansükh's heavy body falling on him. Gansükh gritted his teeth. He had to make this work.

His left arm hung limply at his side, and he screwed up his features as he felt bone grind against the edge of the joint's cartilage. Unslinging the AK-47 from his shoulder with his right arm, he thumbed the safety and pointed the heavy weapon at the trooper that even now attempted to choke Hunter into submission, and fired a single burst. He was ten feet away. At this range, he couldn't miss.

The trooper went limp, smoke and vaporized brain matter hissing from the hole in his head, and Hunter sucked in air, color rushing back into his dark skin as he began to sputter and cough. He pulled at the arm still wrapped loosely around his neck, clawing it of off him as he rolled away from the halfway-gutted dead man.

Gansükh turned to the other two troopers who had nearly recovered from their injuries and regained their feet several yards away, and leveled his assault rifle at them. He pulled the trigger and sprayed them both with bullets in the face and neck, his aiming slightly affected by the jump of the weapon, and not having another good arm to compensate for the kick of sustained fire. They fell, and would not get up again.

Gansükh turned back to see Hunter still coughing and holding his bruising throat, but with eyes wildly alert and panicked. He tried to speak, could not, and simply pointed behind Gansükh, his eyes moving deliberately to from Gansükh's gaze, then over his shoulder, than back again in a wordless warning.

"I know," Gansükh said simply, and turned, his AK gripped firmly in one hand.

Gorgeous George had reassembled an impressive amount of his body, considering how far it had spread out over the grass when it had exploded under the impact of Gansükh landing on him. Like a living pool of tar, he had begun to slither and snake himself together again in long, coiling ropes of black and purple ooze that lashed together and pooled and clung to one another. There was not quite a fully realized human form yet, but Gansükh could clearly discern the outlines and beginnings of a purple skull and countenance. He clicked the AK onto fully automatic using the switch by his thumb, and leveled it at the newly-formed head, and pulled the trigger, stiffening his shoulder and bracing himself with his feet.

The spray of bullets caught George full on in his half-formed face, splashing against his watery flesh like rocks being thrown into a pond. A horrible, guttural screeching noise emanated from the metamorph's oozing, halfway formless body as it still attempted to reassemble itself through the barrage of gunfire. Gansükh knew that he was merely providing distraction, annoying George as best he could; The bullets would do no more to the shapeshifter than kicking sand in someone's eyes. But the was the whole point.

There was a sound like a bullwhip as a tendril of George's body shot out and struck Gansükh full in the chest, knocking him off his feet and into the hard dirt. Another black tentacle snaked out and lashed itself around the barrel of the AK-47, pulling it out of Gansükh's hand and retracting it, rubber-band-like, into George's body, where he no doubt meant to crush the offending object.

Gansükh couldn't help but crack a smile as he reached into his pocket and thumbed a hidden switch.

"Goodbye, George."

The small thermite charge that had been hidden inside the hollow of the rifle's stock detonated, and Gansükh put a hand over his eyes as Gorgeous George was engulfed in white-hot flame, the blast of heat scorching his cheeks and singeing his eyebrows. The stench of chemically-induced fire and the curious aroma of George's liquid body burning filled his nose and throat, and Gansükh had to hold back a cough.

"Do you booby-trap all of your guns?"

Gansükh turned and smiled, grabbing Hunter's outreached hand, allowing the muscular boy to pull him to his feet. For a moment, Gansükh had forgotten about the pain in his dislocated shoulder, but the grinding he felt as Hunter hauled him to his feet cause him to suck in air and cradle the limb gingerly.

"Yes," Gansükh said matter-of-factly through clenched teeth, though he still managed a wry smile, then, gently, extended the limp arm to Hunter, "Help me out here."

"I'll find something for you to bite down on," Hunter said, coughing slightly as the strain of speaking obviously irritated his battered windpipe.

"No," Gansükh sighed, "Just do it."

Hunter studied Gansükh, looked down at the shoulder in question, then shrugged. He grabbed the limp hand, braced Gansükh's shoulder, and without so much as a countdown (intentionally so), wrenched the arm in a sharp arc. The bone relocated with a sickening crunch and pop, and for a moment Gansükh went bug-eyed with pain, dropping to the ground on his knees, gasping for breath as the gut-wrenching sensation faded.

"Are you okay?" Gansükh asked finally, looking up at his teammate as he brought himself back to his feet and gesturing at the forming bruises around his neck, throat and shoulders.

Hunter smiled ironically, swallowed, and grimaced at the pain it caused him. "It only hurts when I breathe."

"I am too late."

Gansükh and Hunter turned with a start to see Rin standing several feet away from them as though she had appeared out of thin air, soaked nearly head to foot in blood, her black hair wet and matted against her neck and face, hands resting idly on the hilts of her swords as she regarded the dying blaze that had formerly been Gorgeous George.

"Only just," Hunter grinned. He glanced at Gansükh, then gestured at the fire, "Do you think that will kill him?"

"Probably not," Gransükh frowned, "He's not an immediate concern, in any case."

Hunter looked at the smoldering pile sourly, then put a finger to his ear with a sudden look of consternation.

"Hey," he said, "Does anyone else find it strange that there haven't been any transmissions in a couple minutes?"

Gansükh put a finger to his own ear, heard only the light hiss of static in the earpiece, and clicked the receiver on his throat on.

"This is Ambush, does anyone read me? Over."

Nothing but a pregnant silence filled their ears. He tried several more times, with similar results.

"The gunfire has stopped as well," Rin remarked.

The two boys pricked their ears and listened, straining to hear all the minutiae that Rin could discern with her mutant abilities. Sure enough, the parkway had become remarkably quiet. After nearly ten minutes of sustained chaos, it was unsettling. Without knowing why, Gansükh had the sudden overwhelming urge to check on the battery pack that powered the CHB harnesses. It was intact, even after his long fall, and hummed with energy in the small of his back at his touch.

Gansükh reached into a holster strapped to his belt and produced a pistol, sliding back the hammer with his index finger and thumb, inspecting the chamber, and releasing. He frowned as his injured shoulder throbbed with pain from that small exertion, as it likely would for a few days, even with the joint relocated. He looked at Rin and Hunter.

"Ready?" he asked, and there was no need for elaboration between them. They nodded.

"There are genome troopers in the trees not far off," Rin said, loosening the hilt of her katana from its scabbard with a thumb, "But Sinister sent out an order not long ago for us to be taken alive. They shouldn't present a problem."

Gansükh found a small measure of relief in that news; It meant that there was a good chance that the resounding silence in the parkway wasn't due to their teammate's deaths. Hunter seemed less reassured.

"Why would he give an order like that?" he asked, crossing his dark, muscled arms in front of him skeptically.

Without offering a reply, Rin turned and began walking briskly toward the nearby treeline, in the direction from which the last remnants of Vascha and Ben's gunfire had come minutes before. Gansükh and Hunter followed closely behind, each advancing their pace into a jog, then breaking into a run.

"It would seem," Rin answered finally, "That we have piqued his interest."


	20. Somewhat Damaged

_**Hi Readers,**_

_**This one took a little longer than I thought. It's been somewhat difficult to properly balance the story with the characters suddenly split up during the same battle sequence. I hope you find it to be worth the wait.**_

_**Fun fact: The title of this chapter comes from the song I listened to while jamming through the first draft.**_

_**Hori out.**_

Vascha was suddenly unsettled by the fact that she had not heard any return fire for several seconds, despite the brief pauses in her own volleys with her carbine, which had become so warm from use that it seemed to hum in her hands. She turned her head, looked at Ben, and saw the growing concern in his eyes as well.

Vascha trained her vision upward, and though she could see nothing through the dense cover of the trees, she studied the movement of the branches keenly.

"You said she's in the trees?" Vascha asked in a barely audible whisper, the tip of her index finger hovering over the carbine's trigger, almost shaking in anticipation.

"I said she probably is," Ben said, his own voice thin and low, "I'm not Rin. I can't tell if-"

Somewhere in the trees above their heads, a limb snapped, and though there was no other evidence of movement, no indication what might happen next, or even a hint of what direction an attack might come from, the training that had been drilled into their heads for years took over in an instant. Nearly in unison, they turned, braced their feet against the earthen barrier that Ben had created, and pushed, sending themselves skidding on their backs across the path. Not far, but far enough.

Almost in the same moment, in a flash of body armor and dark, hazel-colored hair, the woman dropped down on the spot they had occupied a fraction of a second before, bringing her rifle down like a club, smashing it down into the ground and driving her boots into the gravel, the blows intended for Vascha and Ben's heads.

Vascha looked at Ben, and without a word passing between them, they leveled their weapons at their attacker and fired.

Being trained by Logan, Vascha had come to know definitions of human speed that most people would never encounter in their lives. This woman met and exceeded all of them. It was all she could do to keep her jaw from dropping as the older brunette's body arced and twisted like lightning, avoiding their lines of fire and diving out of the way as if it had been something she rehearsed.

_Holy shit. She moves like..._

There was a connection that Vascha's mind wanted to make, something in the fluid, practiced movements that was familiar to her, but before the thought could fully materialize, both she and Ben had spent another magazine each and hit nothing but dirt, trees, and air. The brunette's eyes met Vascha's. Something hot and angry glowed in there, but also a keen understanding, a click of intuition, and at once Vascha knew that the brunette had counted the shots, and knew that both Vascha and Ben had emptied their weapons.

Whether Ben realized this fact as well, Vascha did not know, but she dared not waste time trying to warn him verbally, but rather trusted the same training that guided his actions as hers.

Ben fingered the button by the trigger guard on his carbine, and the spent magazine dropped from the bottom of the weapon. In that instant, both Vascha and the brunette leapt into action, before the square box that still smoked from spent powder had even dropped a centimeter.

While he attempted his tactical reload, Ben would be vulnerable for roughly three seconds. That was a figure that Vascha knew about Ben as well as any other fact about him, from height to weight to eye color. It was, up to this point, the longest three seconds of Vascha's life. The brunette darted forward, that hot intensity still raging behind her eyes, Ben's momentary vulnerability clearly at the forefront of her mind. Vashca moved forward to meet her. Conventionally, she had expected the woman to draw a sidearm or some other weapon, and so attempted to close the gap between them as quickly as possible. The brunette made no such move, however, simply charged toward her, fists clenched tightly. Vascha found that perplexing.

_Is she going to try and take us out hand-to-hand?_ Vascha shrugged inwardly, Her funeral.

Just before their bodies met, Vascha activated the strange organs in her body that fed on light, and felt suddenly energized as the particles, rays, or whatever light actually was, bent and turned and entered her tar-colored skin, sapping it from the area surrounding her. She did not have enough time to concentrate and totally drain the light from the air around her, so she could not blind the woman, but she knew that even that small amount would obscure Vascha from her vision, make her silhouette muddy and difficult to discern, like ink on black paper. The fact that draining light from her surroundings always seemed to spike her speed and strength for a precious few seconds didn't hurt either.

She turned the carbine in her hands and swung the stock of the weapon in a short arc like an extension of her own elbow, aimed directly for the woman's temple. Except the woman's temple was not there to be struck. The brunette tilted her head ever so slightly, shifted her weight, and Vascha watched her weapon hit empty air, catching a wisp of dark brown hair in its wake and doing nothing more. Even though she had not over-extended herself and completely opened up her body with the attack, Vascha had placed enough faith in her mutant ability to assure herself that the swing of her carbine would hit home, and had not thought to compensate for the fact that she might miss completely. That was a mistake. Vascha felt hands clasp the barrel of her weapon and jerk it sharply downward while she was still not fully balanced. The short strap that held the gun to her body snapped taught and pulled her downward into the brunette's hard knee, and Vascha felt the breath leave her like a missile out of her throat. Before she could recover, she felt a lean, muscled, armor-clad leg slip behind her own, felt a strong arm wrap around her neck, and her body was propelled hard into the ground. The entire exchange had taken place in less than a second, and from her back Vascha could see the brunette continue towards Ben without breaking a stride. His hand, clasping a fresh magazine, was mere inches from the port in the weapon.

Again, there was something in the way the woman moved that sparked something in Vascha's mind. Some instinctive, primordial connection that most people would probably miss. Still, it bit and nipped at the edge of her mind, refusing to be ignored. Refusing to be overlooked. The sureness of the brunette's strides, the swagger in her movements, the way she had so easily adapted to Vascha's ability, the strength in her body and the fire in her eyes...

_She moves like_

_Shhhrrrink!_

_Oh no..._

The noise was different, ever so slightly, more of a scraping than the metallic slicing that Logan's claws produced, but it was familiar nonetheless. And suddenly, as the pairs of claws slid from their housings in the woman's flesh and clicked into the housings on each of her fists, things began to fall into place, and Vascha felt a small part of herself wilt inside.

X-23. It was both a name and a title, and it filled Vascha's mouth with a metallic taste as adrenaline pumped hard into her veins.

What Vascha and the rest of Logan's team actually knew about the fabled 'Clone of the Wolverine' was steeped more in rumor and half-truths than actual facts, her escapades over the decades in Africa, Eastern Europe, and South America becoming the stuff of legend that soldiers of fortune jawed about over drinks, but what little she did know sent a shot of electricity down her spine, gooseflesh rippling over her black skin. The confirmed kills attached to this woman's dossier read like a most wanted list of the world's scum, from tyrants and dictators to hired soldiers and killers. What she was doing here, serving Sinister, Vascha could only guess at.

In any case, with those blades of hers swiftly approaching Ben, it did not much matter at the moment.

Ben was no slouch, however, and never had been. He saw exactly what Vascha saw, made the same connection, and to his credit the only thing that changed in his actions or demeanor was a slight furrowing of his eyebrows as he slid the magazine into the port, felt it click, and brought the carbine to bear on Logan's clone.

_Too slow._ Vascha grimaced, still trying to suck in air and recover herself.

Ben managed to squeeze off a single burst, which X-23 handily dodged before she cleaved his weapon in half across the chamber in one blindingly fast stroke of her arm. It might have ended there. X-23 might have finished Ben in that instant, with neither of them having laid a finger on her, if not for a slight miscalculation on the clone assassin's part. Her claws raked too closely to the firing mechanism of the carbine, and rather than cutting clean through the machinery within, the firing pin released, and an additional round discharged in the ruined gun, rattling horribly against the inside of the upper receiver before splintering against the cleaved barrel, chunks of metal burying themselves in X-23's hand as it passed by.

Ben cursed as he dropped the pieces of the weapon and shielded his eyes from the accidental discharge. X-23 snarled and backstepped, holding the partially shredded flesh of one fist, rage in her eyes. Already, Vascha could see the skin mending itself, and knew the woman's shock at the sudden pain would last only moments.

Ben knew how lucky he had just been, and did not look to push his fortune. Neither did Vascha. Their eyes met for a moment, each nodding slightly in understanding at what their next move would be.

Raising his hand in a gesture of concentration, Ben lifted the earth that surrounded him like a living thing and sent it spraying in X-23's direction with the force of a sandstorm. She raised her arms in front of her face, protecting her eyes from the harsh onslaught. Vascha lifted herself up onto her knees, her breath finally returning to her, and from a holster against her ribs drew a pistol. It was a powerful snub-nose revolver with large stopping power and limited range. Vascha was banking on the former as she took aim at X-23's crouching form and fired.

Logan's clone caught the round in the chest, the force whipping her around and crumpling her knees under her as a small rope of blood arced from the hole in her thick body armor. Vascha fired again, the tremendous force of the revolver rattling her teeth. The second shot hit X-23 in the meat of her thigh as she fell.

Ben relented the storm of earth as he saw the mutant fall facedown into the dirt, the claws on her hands retracting as blood quickly began to darken the ground around her.

Vascha finally allowed herself to breathe for what seemed like the first time in minutes, inhaling in a long gasp. She noticed that her hands trembled ever so slightly as she lowered the gun.

Ben took a step toward the prone form of X-23, being mindful to avoid the range of her hands despite the fact that the woman had stopped breathing. He touched a boot to her leg, jostled her slightly and, finding no response, turned to glance at Vascha.

"It's X-23," he said.

"I know."

"What the hell is she doing he-"

Shhhrrrink!

Ben would never finish his sentence. The claw that extended from the foot nearest to him took both of them completely by surprise.

_Claws in the feet? Oh fu-_

There was no time for verbal warning, no time to even form a coherent thought. Vascha simply acted, dropping her revolver, springing from her knees onto her feet, starting the first movements of a stride that would close the space between herself and Ben. If she was fast enough she could pull him away in time. If she was fast enough she could protect him. Like the leader that Logan had told her she was years and years ago.

She was not fast enough. Neither was Ben.

X-23 swung her leg, her whole body straining against the pain of the bullets in her chest and thigh, and buried the claw that protruded between her toes into Ben's body, four inches to the left of his navel. His eyes widened and his mouth opened and closed wordlessly, his brain refusing to process the sudden grievous wound.

_No, no, no, no.._.Vascha began pumping her legs harder than ever. Never had such a short distance, perhaps ten feet at the most, seemed so impossibly far

Immediately, on instinct, Ben grasped X-23's boot, trying to force the blade out or, at the very least, keep it stationary. Ben knew as well as anybody the properties of the adamantium that composed X-23's claws. It was the same metal that coated Logan's, and the slightest movements would allow the claw embedded in his guts to slice him open entirely.

_Shhhrrrink!_

The second claw on X-23's other foot extended, and she cocked her leg to make a kick that would surely be a killing blow.

Vascha tackled Ben, pushing him away from X-23. She felt him gasp sharply as the claw slid out of his abdomen as they both fell. She felt the hiss of air as the claw on X-23's other foot sliced into the space where she and Ben had just been. She landed hard on him, eliciting a cry from her teammate as he held his hands over the wound in his belly, thick, dark blood already seeping between his gloved fingers. Vascha, still moving on pure instinct, rolled off of her comrade, grabbed him by the shoulders, and began pulling him further away from X-23, who was slowly getting back to her feet.

She propped Ben against a nearby tree, ignoring his groans of protest at being moved so roughly. Stealing a glance behind her to make sure that X-23 was still not fully recovered, she pulled one of Logan's blades from the sheathes she kept on her at all times and began cutting away Ben's body armor and outer layers of clothes. She pulled at his hands, but was met with resistance and a grunt of pain.

"Fuck," Ben hissed, his curses stringing together into one long thread of syllables, "Fuck, fuck, damn it all."

"Let me see," she snapped, and pulled his hands away, tearing off the undershirt and looking at the naked flesh of his abdomen. The gash was roughly an inch and a half long and pumped out blood with every beat of Ben's heart. It was dark. Very dark. Had she hit his liver? If so... No, she dared not even think it. She replaced his already blood-soaked hands over the wound.

"Press hard," she urged, and began digging through her gear until she found was she was looking for. Out of a large pocket inside of her thigh, several packages spilled out, each the size of a deck of cards. She grabbed one, ripped the outer lining off with her teeth, and began prepping the device. She was familiar with the technology, though she'd never had to use one before. It was a material that adhered to a wound and sealed it like glue with a hard outer casing to prevent further trauma. It was only effective when a small tab at the corner of the package was pulled, and the material allowed to heat up. It was designed mainly for bullet wounds, but it would serve just as well for a blade puncture. Although it apparently hurt like hell.

Vascha pulled the tab, instantly feeling intense heat radiating from the object. She reached with her free hand and pulled Ben's hands away again.

"Ben," she urged, "Look at me."

He looked at her, and she slapped the bandage onto his abdomen, an audible hiss emanating from it as the flesh reacted to the heated material. She could see Ben's eyes widen in pain as he sucked air between clenched teeth, a rasping noise coming from the back of his throat. He fought the urge to push her away, and instead wrapped his blood-soaked hands around her shoulders, squeezing so hard she could practically feel her flesh bruise beneath her armor. Within seconds it was over. The wound was closed for now, and Ben finally managed a full breath through the pain. A thick layer of sweat already covered his face, which was several shades lighter than normal.

"Vasch'," he said, though he speech was thick now as the first hints of shock began to set in.

"It's alright."

"She's coming... Behind you..."

"I know. Just wait here a minute," Vascha reassured him as she unclasped and unzipped the top layers of armor and various small sidearms on her upper body, letting them drop into the grass, freeing up her mobility and leaving her in a moderately protective sleeveless shirt, with thin, flexible armor plates in the chest and over the spine, and the CHB harness with the small, heavy battery that still hummed warmly in the small of her back. She removed her gloves, soaked with blood and sticky, and tossed them aside. She unclipped her carbine and the last of her magazines and placed them on Ben's lap, though, given his condition, his ability to use any of it was questionable. "I've got this."

As an afterthought, Vascha reached behind her back, feeling the heavy battery attached there, and disconnected it from the harness she wore with a click and a small hiss of static electricity. She clipped it to Ben's own harness the way she had been shown by SHIELD's technicians, making sure it clicked into place.

"What are you doing?" Ben asked, the concern in his voice overshadowed by the drowsy thickness of his speech as he struggled to stay conscious.

"Too much weight," Vascha explained, "I need to get in close to take her out. That battery is the ticket home, remember. I can't risk her damaging it. Don't worry, I'll take it back as soon as I'm done with her."

"Vascha..." Ben made a move as if to grab at her, but she put a hand around his outstretched wrist and firmly placed it on the carbine on his lap.

"Just stay awake, just stay with me," Vascha said, "I'll be fine."

"Big talk."

Vascha turned to face X-23 just in time to see the metal slugs she had fired into her pop out of the woman's chest and thigh as the flesh healed. She stood now, slouched slightly, still wincing in pain from internal injuries from the bullets that had not yet fully mended, the scratches around her face and hands left by Ben's earthen attack now little more than dark flecks on her skin. She spat blood in Vascha's direction and bared red-stained teeth.

"I'm guessing from the accent and the... complexion..." she hissed, popping the claws in her hands with that sickening sound of metal against flesh, "That you must be Black. That was a really creative choice on the name, by the way. Did you pick it during art class?"

Vascha drew Logan's other claw from the sheath at her thigh, now holding one in each hand. She brandished them, making sure that X-23 could see their size and shape.

"My name is Vascha Aleksandrov," she said, dropping all pretense. She lifted the claws clenched in her fists. "You know what these are." It was not a question.

X-23 smiled, now standing a little straighter as her injuries disappeared, but offered no reply.

"I want to ask you something," Vascha said, as they began circling each other slowly, each buzzing with anticipation of the impending conflict. Her system was pumped so full of adrenaline that the tips of her fingers and toes ached, and the edge of her vision seemed to vibrate. She took note that when the claws on her feet were extended, X-23's steps had to be slower, more deliberate. She could use that to her advantage.

Again, X-23 did not reply, but gave that fierce, enigmatic smile.

Vascha stopped circling, and X-23 stopped as well, mirroring her movements. Vascha pointed a claw, The Wolverine's claw, at X-23's chest.

"Were you there when he died?"

To Vascha's surprise, the woman's smile faded. There was none of the mirth or twisted humor that had inhabited her face a moment ago, only a grim, baleful frown.

"Was I there?" she asked rhetorically, "Little girl, I helped put the old bastard down."

Vascha's grip around the claws tightened, and if her skin could show any color at all, her knuckles would have gone white. In the entirety of her life, Vascha had never truly understood the phrase 'seeing red' until now. Rage like molten steel coursed through her veins, she found it nearly impossible to breathe without panting, and new sweat began to form a sheen over her neck and chest.

"Just following orders, I suppose," Vascha spat, "Like all the other merc garbage here. What's the asking price for your services, anyway? How much did it cost to kill Logan?"

"I did what I did because I had to," X-23 snarled, almost as thought Vascha's words offended her, "I don't expect a little pinprick like you to understand this, but we all have a part to play in this, like it or not. Logan's part could have been something great, something meaningful, but he was as shortsighted as you are. And your part? Your part is getting the shit kicked out of you for the next few minutes."

It was Vascha's turn to smile. "I was getting my ass kicked by the real Wolverine before I had my first period. What makes you think I'm going to roll over for you, a tube-grown knockoff that licks Sinister's boots?"

It was a weak jab, and, in her heart of hearts, Vascha had honest doubts that she would come out on top going toe-to-toe with X-23. The best she could hope for was that she would keep X-23 distracted long enough to take Sinister out, which she could only hope was happening even now. But it seemed to sting the woman more than Vascha would have guessed. Immediately, her expression turned sour, and she spat the last remnants of blood out of her mouth and raked her claws against each other, producing a bright crackle of blue sparks.

"Alright, that's it," she smiled suddenly, with what looked like real enjoyment as she swung her arms back and forth, stretching the muscles, "Sinister told me he wanted you little shits alive. But you? Bitch, I am going to cut you open and pull you inside-out."

X-23 took a step forward, her clawed foot scraping the dirt and gravel.

"I'm going to see what color the inside of you skull is."

Another step.

"And then I'm going to eat your goddamn heart."

X-23 charged at Vascha, fists cocked back at her sides, no doubt destined for Vascha's chest if everything went her way. Vascha had no intention of letting that happen. Now that she'd had time to concentrate, time to prepare herself mentally, she could use her light-absorbing ability to its fullest extent, sapping every last speck of it from the entire area, not just from around her body. She felt it course into her as everything in a ten yard radius went dark as pitch, invigorating her in a way that she could never fully describe, and had never even been properly studied.

She remembered how surprised she had been when Gansükh had asked her once if she could see in the dark. At first she had not understood the question, but then she realized that, for every other person in the world, light was the source of vision and illumination in the world. That was not how her own eyes worked. Even before her skin had blackened and her powers had manifested, she had never made a visual distinction between light and shadow. She could tell when the lights in a room were not on, but it made no difference to her. She never told anyone, because she knew that it would welcome nothing but pity and misunderstanding, but she saw the world, the whole entire world, in vivd shades of black and grey. She could pick out hue of things based on hunches and instinct, she could tell the difference between blood and chocolate syrup, though she did not know how or why, but nothing actually had a color in her eyes. Vascha didn't mind. Light was simply a different experience for her, and she could accept that.

Besides, it made what she was about to do possible.

She knew that, with her heightened senses, X-23 would only be at a slight disadvantage for the short time that she could keep and area completely absent of light, but it would be enough. She saw the taller woman falter every so slightly in her approach, squinting her eyes uselessly, trying to find light that wasn't there. Vascha used the precious moments before X-23 found her, carefully tucking Logan's claws under her arms and reaching into small, matching pouches attached to her belt. From them she produced two pairs of brass knuckles, which were actually made of titanium with a thin brass outer layer, and slipped them over her fingers before replacing the claws in her hands. They were specially designed to allow her to hold knives while wearing them in a configuration known as a poor man's trench knife, and they felt as comfortable on her hands as her own skin.

X-23's hearing was excellent if it was anything like Logan's, but without her layers of body armor to rustle against each other, Vascha made barely any noise at all as she waited for the woman to come within range, then cocked her arm, twisted her body, and brought her fist up under X-23's chin in a brutal uppercut, connecting squarely. She felt X-23's teeth clack together as her head snapped backwards.

It felt good. Really good, actually. Vascha hadn't felt this way about hurting anyone in a long time. Before it had almost always been just a thing that she happened to do. Sure, there was the odd mercenary with a reputation for raping women or a war criminal that liked torturing mutants that she had really loved putting her boots into, but feeling X-23's feet leave the ground slightly as Vascha's blow sent her reeling backwards actually made her smile. Just a little. It was probably why she had decided to use the brass knuckles in the first place. It was probably also why she hit X-23 again in the temple. Hard.

With her senses rattled by the blows to her head, it was all X-23 could do to hold her arms out in defense in the darkness, covering her face and chest from any further assault. Vascha couldn't ask for a better opening, and drove Logan's claws deep into the woman's outer thighs, driving the blades with such force that they only stopped when Vascha's hands hit flesh, the ends piercing through the meat of the back of the legs, streaked in red blood. X-23 shrieked in rage and pain.

Vascha knew from countless hours sparring with Logan that she was pressing her luck staying this close to an opponent with the same advantages that he had had. All it would take was one swipe of the clone's hand to cleave one of her arms or her head off. She pulled the blades free and quickly stepped backwards before X-23 brought her claws hands down on her in an arc hampered by injury and anger. In any other fight, she would have been able to relax, but she knew better than to think X-23 would be anything but mildly slowed down by the wounds.

Light was finally coming back into the world around them. Vascha could only contain it so long; It was like holding her breath to keep it inside of her indefinitely. She saw X-23 blink and squint, and she knew it wouldn't be long until the shadows X-23 could see now would become fully realized shapes again.

X-23 dove at her, claws extended, and Vascha rushed to meet her. There was a unique metallic clang as adamantium met adamantium, as indestructible met impermeable, and Vascha gritted her teeth as the woman forced her full weight into the strike, trying to overtake her with sheer force. Their blades rattled and scraped against one another. Vascha felt her boots grind into the dirt of the pathway as X-23's greater weight bear down on her. Wolverine's clone snarled, and Vascha noted with some satisfaction that she had knocked out at least one of her teeth.

Suddenly, the weight was lifted, and Vascha could guess why. Intending to catch her off-balance, X-23 brought up a clawed foot and tried to cut Vascha across the belly. She dodged, but just barely, and hissed in pain as the tip of the claw cut through her thin layer of armor as though it were wet tissue paper and drew a gash three inches long in her abdomen, a small stream of characteristically black blood already starting to run down into the top of her pants. It wasn't the first time she'd been cut with admantium; Training with Logan tended to have an impact in that regard, but as always she was caught off-guard by its sharpness, by the sheer ease with which it passed through her flesh.

She remembered something that Logan had told her once, and it made her grin crookedly:

"Everyone bleeds in a knife fight, kid. It's a chess game of wounds. Take a cut to give a gash. Take a gash to give a stab. Take a stab to give a kill."

_At least I'm giving better than I'm receiving_.

X-23 saw Vascha's smile in the lifting darkness, and her eyes practically crackled with anger. They launched into a dance of flashing metal, sparks flying as their blades bounced and clashed off of one another. It took everything Vascha knew to keep up with her opponent, who was seemingly driven by sheer anger and was years beyond her in age as well as experience. It was remarkable how similar her fighting style was to Logan's, despite the fact that, as far as Vascha knew, the two had never spent any significant amount of time together.

Vascha dodged, bobbed, weaved, and forced herself closer into X-23's defenses. She was smaller than Logan's clone, lighter now without all of her gear, and even with the light almost completely restored as her ability to sap it from the atmosphere was exhausted, she was damn near impossible to see clearly as light slid off of her like water over oil. She felt a claw bite into her shoulder, ignored the sickening sensation of her flesh splitting, and jabbed for X-23's throat with a blade. She missed by millimeters, but her second strike, this one to the body, hit home, and even as she felt another one of X-23's claws dig into her flank, she flexed the muscles of her lean arms and shoved the claw hard into the woman's stomach, pressing upward, aiming to drive it through her diaphragm and into a lung.

_Take a gash to give a stab._

X-23 gasped and wrapped her arms and legs around Vascha, trying to throw her off balance, trying to push their bodies apart, trying to overpower Vascha as the the claw went further and further into her, agonizingly slow. Vascha felt one of the claws on X-23's feet find purchase in the flesh near her hip and stab her, sinking into the muscle. Vascha grunted and, readjusting her body slightly, raised her other fist quick as lightning, cracked X-23 in the jaw with the brass knuckles and sank the second blade into X-23's neck in the same motion, close to the collar bone where the shoulder connected. A red spray of blood from the wound caught her in the face and mouth and eyes, blinding her momentarily.

_Take a stab to give a kill._

Vascha held the blades inside X-23's body as long as she could, biting her lip against the pain as X-23 still feebly stabbed and clawed at her, leaving dozens of thankfully superficial cuts and punctures. Finally, she could hold on no longer and released the blades, bringing up her knee and forcing X-23's weight off of her, both women stumbling backward several paces before collapsing into the dirt.

X-23 regarded the vibranium wire hilts wrapped around the base of the blades that protruded from her belly and neck and, retracting the claws in her hands and feet, grasped them weakly, attempting to pull them out of her. For her efforts, she was rewarded with arcs of blood that showered out of the holes Vascha had made, and then she grunted in pain, her body falling forward so that her head hit the dirt in a small puff of dust and gravel, one of her legs pumping up and down weakly, as though X-23 was having some kind of fit. Slowly, her body stopped moving.

It was only then, after the woman had fallen forward, that Vascha allowed herself a moment to truly relax. She exhaled in a long blow of air and pushed the short hair that had become thick and matted with blood out of her eyes. She hurt _everywhere_, and as she looked down at herself, the reason was more than obvious; X-23, while not scoring any fatal wounds, had treated her with a latticework of cuts all over her tar-colored body, her black blood soaking most of what she was wearing. In one area on her harness, by the shoulder, X-23 had even come dangerously close to cleaving through the delicate electronics concealed within that would allow Vascha to teleport back to the the Helicarrier when this was all over. Upon closer inspection, the wires that ran through the entirety of the harness were still intact, merely exposed under the thick canvas and rubber cowl they had been wrapped in.

Vascha looked over towards the tree where she had left Ben, and was not at all surprised to see him still there, his eyes half closed and fluttering as the worst part of shock from the deep stab wound in his stomach passed. Though at first it appeared that he was almost completely succumbing to unconsciousness, she took note that he had propped her carbine onto his lap in such a way that he held the barrel balanced between his booted feet, with one hand on the trigger. He had the gun trained on X-23's limp body. He turned his head to her slowly and nodded.

"I can't tell how glad I am that I didn't have to save your ass just then," he grinned, his voice a hoarse whisper, "I keep seeing double. Probably would have shot you too by accident."

Vascha laughed. It was all she could do. Her whole body hummed and burned with endorphins and adrenaline as the buzz of combat still pulsed through her. Even the pain of the many cuts in her skin and muscles was mere background noise while her mind still engaged itself in 'fight or flight' mode. She was giddy and tired and terrified and energized all at once.

She was confused for a moment then, when she felt herself stop chuckling, and yet the sound of laughter continued. At first, she thought Ben might be as breathlessly amused and thankful to be alive as she was, but no, he was not laughing, and he wore no smile on his face. Only the same look of confusion that she herself probably had now. Where was it coming from?

Vascha turned her head with a growing sense of dread, and saw X-23's ribcage slowly, rhythmically pumping up and down in time with the ragged, muffled guffawing. Like some undead creature, Logan's clone seemed to rise up as though her body was possessed by some unseen force in one jerky, graceless motion, and she sat back on her knees, Vascha's blades still protruding from her grotesquely. Her face was covered in blood and dirt, and her hair, once a remarkably well-maintained cascade of silky brown locks, was now tangled and matted and hung over her visage like a rat's nest. Still, Vascha could see the horrible smile she wore as she continued to chuckle between clenched teeth.

"If that's all you've got," X-23 hissed, her voice a rough gurgle of sounds, "Then we're all done here, little girl."

Reaching up, X-23 grasped the hilt of the claw that stuck from her neck and wrenched it free, blood pouring from the wound in a long stream before stopping almost at once, her healing factor already going to work on the wound. She did the same with the one in her guts, a long hiss of air from the hole telling Vascha that she had in fact punctured a lung. And yet, X-23 seemed about as phased by that as she would be if Vascha had attacked her with a feather duster.

X-23 regarded the claws in her hands, covered in her own blood, and then looked at Vascha, genuine curiosity in her eyes and asked:

"Do you seriously think that, just because Wolverine sparred with you, that you're in any way equipped to fight me? You think he wasn't going easy on you? Tell me, did you ever, _ever_ fight him when he was injured? Or angry? So blinded with rage that even his allies feared him? Did you ever stop to consider what he could have done to you if he really wanted to fight you?"

Vascha had no answer. She sat back on the dirt path, at a loss for what to do, how to respond. Her limbs felt as though they were cast in lead, and she felt a cold place in her stomach form, and slowly grow larger. Her mind searched for something, anything, any tactic or strategy that would give her some idea of how to respond to this situation. Nothing came.

"There's a difference between us, you know," X-23 frowned, regarding Vascha as she sat stupidly in the dirt, "Fighting is a thing you _do_. Me..?"

Faster than Vascha could track, faster than anything she had ever seen, X-23 lifted Logan's claws and threw them. Not at Vascha, but at Ben. In his waning state of shock, it was all he could to to raise a hand as the blades flew at him. One hit and pierced the carbine in his lap, rendering the weapon useless instantly. The other sank into the meat of Ben's bicep and pinned him to the tree he rested against. Ben shouted with renewed vigor as he grasped the handle with his free hand, pulling at it with all his depleted strength, and accomplishing nothing for his effort.

"...For me," X-23 continued, as she got her feet under her and raised her body up, "Fighting it was I _am_!"

_It was all a feint_, Vascha suddenly realized, _All of it. She could have killed us at any time. She let me injure her to get my weapons away, just to see what kind of fighter I am. I never even came close to beating her._

A strong, sour taste filled Vascha's mouth and throat, and she realized there was a very, _very_ good chance that she was about to die.

* * *

><p>Reality hit Ciara like a punch in the gut. There was no swimming, dreamy sensation as she was gently coaxed from her unconscious state. There was no comforting haze as she slowly reconnected to the world she inhabited. One moment she was not there, and then she was back. Her head was an electric wash of pain lancing from every corner of her body. Her heart pumped battery acid through her veins. Her chest and back felt as though they had been used as an anvil. Ciara had been knocked unconscious enough times to be familiar with the sensation; Her healing factor, while nowhere near as impressive as Logan's had been, would often snap her back into consciousness with no warning after it had repaired whatever had caused her to black out, as though cold water had been dumped on her, and she'd been merely sleeping.<p>

In short, Ciara woke up extremely pissed off.

She felt herself being carried, each arm held over one shoulder of a pair of genome troopers. They hefted her like the dead weight she was with little effort, and by their body language, Ciara knew they didn't perceive her as a threat. She was injured, incapacitated, and helpless.

That's what they thought, anyway.

Her arms were still slick with blood from the dozens of superficial lacerations inflicted upon her by Hairbag, some already on their way to healing, and she used that to her advantage as she flexed the muscles of her protesting shoulders and wrenched free of the troopers' grip in one fluid motion. Something popped in her already battered spine from the sudden movement that sent lightning deep down into her lower back and legs. She ignored it. Already the troopers were reacting to her sudden escape, grabbing at her with their gloved and armored hands, grasping at her limbs, trying to put an arm around her neck. One of her eyes was still not responding, for whatever reason Ciara did not know and did not want to know, but she was operating on reflex as much as anything else, and her diminished sense of distance did not matter. Not at this close range.

She bent, twisted out of the nearest trooper's reach, and delivered a savage low kick to the side of his knee, feeling the delicate tissue of the joint snap and pop, even through his amor. The large soldier dropped like a stone as he found himself suddenly with only one functioning leg. He did not cry out, did not scream, simply dropped.

She would have finished him there, but the other trooper was already on top of her, trying to wrestle her to the ground, trying to overpower her with his greater weight. It was a tactic that just about every man she'd ever fought tried to use against her, and it certainly wasn't going to work this time.

She grabbed him by the belt on his uniform and the front of the large respirator helmet he wore, flexed the muscles in her legs and lifted the soldier entirely over her head before bringing him crashing back down, his full weight landing with her knee in the small of his back, instantly cracking bones, severing connective tissue, rupturing the discs between his vertebrae. She felt his helmet and mask shatter in her hand, and she discarded it without a second thought, rolling the newly paralyzed body off of her.

She was about to turn her attention back to the first trooper when she caught a scent from the open helmet of the man who's back she'd just broken that sent a shiver down her spine.

It was only then that she saw his face.

For a long moment, it was as though her brain had frozen, like the old computers Madam Yuriko used, motors humming and whirring but accomplishing nothing. The moment stretched and pulled into what seemed like hours to Ciara as she regarded the man on the ground in front of her. The pain, the anger, the battle, all were forgotten. Replacing it was confusion, fear, anxiety, and the very sudden sensation that her heart had jumped into her throat.

_No_, she thought, _No, not possible_.

Staring back at her through the halfway-shattered helmet and respirator, though she knew in her heart that it could not be so, though it was _impossible_, was the face of Logan. The Wolverine.

_It's not possible,_ a part of her mind shouted, _Logan is dead, Ciara. He's dead!_

And yet, despite that. There he was. There was no mistaking it.

It explained the strange feeling the troopers had given her since she first encountered them. Their smell, their movements, had all been strangely, horribly familiar, yet Ciara had not been able to bring herself to face it.

Though she could not explain why, she had the strong desire to touch the trooper's face. That face that she had only known in memories and dreams these past years. The face that they had all come to love and respect and missed so deeply that it physically hurt. She reached out to the man that lay on the ground in front of her.

The way she and most of her teammates missed Logan was not something that could easily be put into words. Of course he was like a surrogate father to some of them, and their trainer and their protector. That much was obvious. But there was an intangible element to the rapport he had developed with them, a reassurance that, despite what the world had become, and for some of them it was the only world they'd ever known, things could get better, that tomorrow was something worth seeing. When Logan had gone, that had disappeared from Ciara's life, and it had taken her months to rekindle that same fighting spirit in herself. And, as though by a miracle, here was Logan, looking at her, wordless, through a shattered helmet and respirator.

And yet, she quickly realized, pulling her hand back suddenly, it was not his face at all. The structure was there, the features were basically the same. The jaw, the mouth, the brow, everything was in place. Yet, everything she had come to know and love about her master's face was absent. The years of wear and tear, the deep wrinkles along the mouth and eyes, the bristling eyebrows and matching beard, and sleek, wolfish hair and... The life. There was no life in this... thing's eyes. Its eyes were dull and glass-like, and looked at her with an expression similar to a camera regarding a subject; Without emotion, without pain or anger. Without anything at all. It was as though someone had taken Logan's corpse an reanimated it. A puppet. A _thing_.

She stood, put a booted foot on top of the paralyzed trooper's head, and smashed the face that she saw there into the ground with all her might, the entire helmet and skull caving in under her strength, popping like a piece of hard candy. She turned. Her eyes locked on the other trooper that, even now, struggled to stand and fight her despite the shattered ligaments in his knee. She stormed over to him, grabbed him by the neck, and lifted him completely off the ground. With her other hand, she clawed at his helmet until she found purchase and tore the apparatus from his head.

Again, Logan's face, that was somehow not Logan's face, stared back at her.

_Clones. They're all clones._

Something horrible was growing inside of Ciara. She might have called it anger or rage, but that would do no justice at all to what burned in her heart now. It was hysteric. It was bestial. It was every part of her that was more animal that girl, every part of her that hated people and the things they did and the words they made and the ways they destroyed the world and everything in it and everything she loved. She felt her heart pounding like a sledgehammer in her chest, felt herself breathing so rapidly that she began to feel dizzy. Logan had taught her long ago to master and control the animal side of herself, citing his own experiences with berserk episodes that put everyone around him in danger. He had warned her so many times of how quickly that animal inside her would ever take and destroy what parts of her could be human.

But, at that moment, Ciara had seen and felt just about enough of what humans and their human affairs could offer her. She'd had more than enough.

She pulled the trooper closer to her, his dead, expressionless eyes staring into her as he struggled uselessly against her grip, trying somehow to free himself. It was laughable, really. The way she felt, Ciara wouldn't let go of him if he used a chainsaw to do it. She held him to her eye level, their faces inches apart.

"_How dare you?_" she roared at him, at everyone, and, now grabbing his neck with both hands, threw him to the ground and began bashing the back of the troopers skull into the ground. She wanted to crush that face that mocked her, that mocked her pain. She wanted to pulverize it and every other trooper she could find, and everyone that had helped make them. She wanted to rip them apart and chew on their flesh and bones, she wanted to scorch them from the Earth forever.

Before she could realize what was happening, she was holding the trooper down as she bashed his face with her forehead over and over, a deep, guttural roar beginning in the back of her throat, soon growing into a long, animalistic howl of anger as the face of the abomination soon became soft and pulpy and she mashed it more and more into the dirt with her repeated, savage headbutts. Soon there was nothing that would even indicate that there had been a head there at all, except for the wet, red pile of matter and small shards of bone and teeth that spread out around her. She felt gooey pieces of the thing's brain in her hair and stuck to her face, but she made no move to wipe it away.

_There are more_, a horrible, animal-like voice in her head shrieked, _More of these things! Find them! Kill them!_

What little part of her was still human, still rational, knew that there was something more important that she must do. Someone she was... Looking for? Someone that she needed to stop from-

_Find them! Kill them!_

But she had a mission... There was something that she had to...

_Find them! Kill them! Break their bones in your teeth! Make them hurt! Make them all suffer!_

The part of Ciara that had been a rational human being faded further and further into the background noise of her mind, now aflame with primal urges to hunt and maim and kill the ones that had offended her so. Her mission was forgotten. Her team was forgotten. And if someone in that moment had asked who she was, she would not have understood what she meant. She was a hurricane. A force of nature. She was wrath incarnate. Her injuries, extensive as they were, were now mere annoyances. The blindness in one of her eyes was an inconvenience. She would not be stopped. She _could_ not be stopped.

As if on cue, three troopers emerged from a thick patch of trees and bushes nearby, apparently alarmed by the noises of her carnage.

They saw her.

She saw them.

They trained their weapons on her.

It was the last thing they would ever do on this Earth.


	21. Ghosts Against the Wall

Vascha tried to swallow and found that her throat had become so parched and tight with stress that it was impossible to do. Her tongue was thick and had the consistency of sandpaper in her mouth. In just a moment, X-23 would recover from her wounds, cross the short distance between them, and kill her. It was not conjecture. It was simply a matter of time.

She felt the loose gravel and dirt under her hands as she sat back on her knees, and was suddenly very aware of the fact that it was not real. She did not sit upon real ground, but on a manufactured farce that decorated the interior of The Ark. The trees, the grass, the dirt, it had all been placed here. It had all been _arranged_. It seemed suddenly very sad to her that she would not even have the dignity of dying with the touch of the Earth's surface against her skin. She would die in the cold, artificial belly of this stupid, horrible machine.

She could not run. She was too tired to run. Her muscles felt like lead. She was too dumbfounded by her own inadequacy to even think.

_Die like a warrior, at least._

She straightened her back, balanced her weight on her knees, and set her jaw. She would meet her end looking it in the eye, with steel in her spine. The way Logan would have. She inhaled, exhaled, and felt the tiniest bit better. Her muscles still quaked, and her jaw was on the verge of rattling, but she would not tremble, would not falter. She had been preparing for this for what seemed like her entire life, ever since an inhibitor collar had been secured around her neck when she was little more than a child. Ever since soldiers had gunned her parents down in front of her, trying to protect their baby.

Suddenly, an ursine roar pierced the air, rattling off the domed roof hundreds of feet above Vascha's head and cascading throughout the parkway. The trees themselves seemed to shudder as the sheer volume of the cry. Instantly, Vascha knew that Ciara had been the source of the noise, and it came as both a relief and a source of added anxiety. It meant that Ciara was still alive, something she had been unsure of since last she'd seen her scamper into the trees, but Vascha had rarely heard such a cry of rage from the girl before; It seemed to shake the very ground she kneeled on. What was happening to her?

X-23 certainly heard the cacophony as well, but made no signal that it concerned her in the least. The last of her healing finally taking effect, she pushed the cascade of matted, blood-streaked brown locks from her eyes and popped all six claws on her hands and feet at once with their characteristic hiss of scraping metal. She looked into Vascha's eyes, and Vascha looked back, determined not to waver. She could look death in the face. She had to.

X-23 took a step forward and began closing the short distance between herself and Vascha, the claws protruding between her toes scraping loudly as she walked.

The part of Vascha's mind that still searched for some way out of this situation frantically began to suggest strategies or counterattacks to her conscious mind, but she dismissed them all outright. X-23 was the better warrior in every sense of the word, and there was nothing that Vascha had in her arsenal that could combat that hard, cold fact. She had taken her best shot, and her best shot had been found wanting. Even if she had wanted to strike back, she had nothing in her repertoire that could stop X-23's adamantium claws. And, in her arrogance and shortsightedness, she had dropped the majority of her weapons, the ones that could do anything to help her now, in a pile by Ben, which were too far away for her to make a dash for them. X-23 would cut her down before she got two strides in. She still had the brass knuckles looped through her fingers, but what could she hope to do with those? With a sigh, she let them slip from her hands and clatter onto the gravel.

_No more weapons. No more-_

With a start, Vascha suddenly recalled the small, hard mass that was nestled in her thin, armored tank top between her small breasts, and practically shuddered. She reached up and touched the object through her plated clothing, feeling the device. It was about the size and shape of a couple decks of cards. She touched a small pouch on her belt that sat just above her buttocks. The small, hard detonator was still there.

How she had forgotten the explosive package that Agent Travis had given her was completely beyond her, but there it was, now burning a hole in her brain with its presence. The previously-frozen machinations in her brain suddenly roared to life with calculations, estimations, and newfound vigor. She glanced at Ben, quickly judged the distance, and narrowed her eyes. It would be close. He might be deafened by the blast, maybe even worse, but the way the mission was quickly going pear-shaped, that would be at least of his concerns.

Vascha put her arm behind he back, placed her thumb over the trigger of the detonator and flipped the small safety switch, making sure to keep the movement slow and casual. She was going to die, but she was going to take Logan's murderous, despicable clone with her.

X-23 lifted her arm, preparing to bring her claws down on top of Vascha's head, probably intending to cleave her in half down the middle. Vascha was at least glad it would be over quickly, and fought the urge to squeeze her eyes shut.

_I'm sorry_, she found herself thinking, but to whom the apology was directed, or what she was apologizing for was unclear. To everyone, she supposed. For everything. To Logan's memory. To her teammates. She had failed in the one thing she had found herself to be good at in her short life. She had never even gotten close to Sinister. It was all so remarkably unfair. That seemed to be the theme of being a mutant.

Vascha began to push the button on the detonator.

Abruptly, X-23 stopped, faltered, and her brow furrowed in confusion. At the same time, both she and Vascha looked down to see the older woman's feet up to her mid-calf had been encased entirely in what looked like beige concrete, effectively pinning her awkwardly in a mid-stride.

At first Vascha did not understand, her mind numbed by blood loss and adrenaline and the thought of her own impending doom, but quickly she grasped what had happened. She whipped her head around and looked at Ben. One arm was still impaled grotesquely on the trunk of the young tree that she had left him leaning upon, but he no longer was struggling to remove the claw that held him there. Instead, he had dug the fingers of his free hand deep into the earth beside him, the muscles of his body straining from the mental exertion, his face screwed up tightly and his eyes rolling back in his head. Sweat poured down his face, which had grown paler than she had ever seen it, his usually olive-colored skin taking on a light blue undertone. He took a moment to look at her with pained eyes, then stared at the hand that held the detonator, and vigorously shook his head.

_Damn it, Ben._

X-23 realized what was happening almost as quickly as Vascha, and turned her head to look at the Israeli mutant that was using his power to make her a prisoner of the very ground she walked on. Her eyes flared and her expression contorted into a mask of rage.

"Little bastard," she growled, and brought the claws on her hands down on the earth that encased her feet, slicing through the quickly-hardening stuff like a knife through cake. On any other day, Vascha would have no doubt that Ben would be able to hold X-23 there indefinitely if he had to, repairing whatever she managed to slice through almost instantly. Now, with a hole in his guts and a blade through his arm to distract him, she could see plainly that it was taking all the strength Ben had in him just to maintain that earthen shackles he had created. With a twist of her powerful legs, X-23 broke them apart, a small puff of dust rising from the shattered pieces as she stepped out of the solidified ground, as though she were stepping out of over-sized boots.

X-23 looked at Ben and sneered. She pointed a clawed hand at him. "I'll be with you in a second."

She turned to look back at Vascha, and once again raised her hand to strike.

Again, the strike did not come. Like liquid, the ground around X-23's feet splashed and sunk beneath her boots as she stepped forward, this time snaking up her knees and over her thighs like a living thing. Vascha could see Ben biting his lip in concentration as he stretched his endurance far beyond the normal thresholds of pain and mental exhaustion. She wanted to tell him to stop, to save his strength to defend his own life when the time came, but she realized that he would not listen even if she ordered him to. She knew because she would have done the same thing for him if their roles had been reversed.

The liquified earth coiled up X-23's body, advancing like a tide with every second, even as Logan's clone tried to slough the stuff off of her body with her hands, growing ever more frustrated as her movement was impeded. Wherever she took a handful of the liquid clay away, however, the tendrils of earth would crawl up her figure in another place, making steady progress upward.

"I'll fucking kill you!" she snapped, but the cool, predatory tone of her voice was faltering, and Vascha could swear that she heard genuine concern in the woman's voice as the soil wormed its way over her collarbone and up her neck. Ben's intentions were now clear; He was going to suffocate her, or he was going to die trying.

"Ben," Vascha said flatly, "Shut this bitch up."

Ben did not reply, he was too far gone in his own concentration, but she had no doubt as the ropes of brown earth forced their way though X-23's clenched teeth and up her nostrils that he had heard her. X-23's throat bunched and tightened, and her trachea bounced up and down as her gag reflex tried to force back the deluge of dirt and rock that Ben was feeding down her windpipe, but there was no amount of muscular protest that would stop it. Vascha could see her eyes grow wide as silver dollars as she retraced her claws and grasped at her throat, dropping to her knees, splashing into the morphing earth at her feet. She would last a minute. Maybe more with her healing factor. But Ben would hold on. He had to. It was certainly a better outcome than voluntarily blowing herself up.

_Click._

Vascha knew what the noise was without having to turn around, and her heart sank. Her suspicions were confirmed when she felt the heavy barrel of a gauss rifle press into the back of her neck just below her skull. She turned her head slightly and saw no less than five genome troopers had emerged from the trees and surrounded Ben, each leveling a weapon at him. Without turning around, she would venture to guess that at least that number had encircled her as well.

One of the troopers near Ben motioned for him to stop using his powers by cutting his fingers quickly across his neck in the universal "stop" gesture. Ben did not even look at the soldier, screwing his eyes closed as he persisted in trying to extinguish X-23's life. The woman still writhed on the pathway, her legs bucking wildly as her brain began to fire random synapses, becoming more and more starved of oxygen. The soldier that had signaled Ben wound up and backhanded him across the jaw so hard that Vascha winced. Ben seemed to deflate as he momentarily blacked out from the precisely-placed blow, his body slumping and dangling from the arm that was pinned to the tree. Mercifully, one of the troopers stepped forward and yanked the blade out and tossed it aside haphazardly, allowing Ben to fall to the ground. Almost immediately, the troopers began to lift him to his feet, not even giving him the chance to regain his senses.

Vascha raised her own hands above her head. She remembered X-23 telling them that Sinister wanted them alive. Maybe with the genome troopers here, the assassin would be less inclined to defy him. Maybe she wouldn't need to die in the next few moments after all. They might even bring them to Sinister. If, by some miracle, they did not find the explosive device in her shirt... Well, that was almost too much to hope for.

X-23 still clawed at her throat, her face going from red to deep purple; Even without Ben controlling the earth, that did not make her airway any less impacted with the dirt and gravel he had placed there. Finally, she popped a single claw on one hand and brought it to her neck, puncturing the trachea with a two-inch slice. Blood dripped from the wound, but, more importantly, what looked like wet globs of sand also sputtered out as X-23's lungs spasmed and forced the matter out of the air passage. Finally, the woman was able to cough, inhaling full breaths of air broken up by vicious fits of gagging and wheezing. Drawing a ragged, pained breath, X-23 glared at Vascha and popped the rest of her claws, dragging herself to her feet and towards her.

"Stand down," one of the troopers barked, his voice muffled and distorted by his mask and respirator.

Vascha turned slightly to look at the soldier that had spoken, or at least, the one she thought had spoken. There was something odd about the voice that she could not place. Something familiar. Something that triggered a reaction in her brain that was both nostalgic and fearful.

X-23 snarled at the trooper and brandished her claws, daring him to strike out at her.

"I don't take orders from you," she hissed, her voice harsh and distorted from the debris in her throat and the healing puncture in it.

Already though, Vascha could see in the woman's body language that she was backing down. The number of troopers that had emerged from the trees around the pathway numbered close to twenty-five now. She had no idea what kind of dynamic existed within Sinister's fold, but it was clear that X-23 did not like the genome troopers, and they didn't seem to care much for her either. In any case, X-23 was outnumbered. Even with her impressive abilities, 25-to-1 on open ground was a suicidal set of odds, and at least one more trooper was arriving with every minute that passed.

Vascha felt strong, armored hands grab her by the wrists, twist her arms into the small of her back, and lift her to her feet, tweaking her shoulders painfully in the process. Another set of hands began patting her down, starting at her booted feet and moving up her legs.

"You will comply," a trooper said, slinging his rifle and stepping towards X-23. His body language was utterly neutral, as was the tone in his oddly-familiar voice, but the way he walked towards X-23 was completely without fear. Either he was very brave or a complete fool.

"_You_ will go fuck yourself, knockoff," X-23 spat. Nevertheless, the claws on her hands and feet sank back into her flesh with a screech, and her posture seemed to relax slightly.

Vascha could not help but notice that X-23 had used the same insult for the trooper that she had used for X-23 herself. Almost as if on cue, X-23's eyes met hers, and she sneered as though she could see into Vascha's mind. There was something curious about the genome troopers that Vascha was missing. Something SHIELD had neglected to tell her?

The soldier that patted her down moved up to her hips and her abdomen. It would be only another couple seconds before he found the explosives in her shirt, and then she would be completely without a weapon.

_Damn._

The exchange between X-23 and the genomes trooper that had spoken looked as though it would continue, with X-23 seeming to bristle like a wild dog as she stepped closer to the masked soldier. She stepped closer still, opening her mouth to say something, but whatever that might have been would forever be a mystery. The soldier suddenly jerked, his body stiffening as a spray of red liquid burst from the front of his mask, hitting X-23 full in the face with gore. Her jaw seemed to drop further in surprise and disbelief as the man fell to his knees and toppled over dead.

There was no noise save for the hissing of air that escaped from the wound, and it was that solitary fact that allowed Vascha to know exactly what had just happened; Gansükh's guns never made noise when he used his cloaking shield. To Vascha's consternation, X-23 was just short enough that Gan's bullet exiting the trooper's skull did not enter hers, but rather zipped overhead. Her stature was probably all that had saved her from being Gansükh's target herself; She was surrounded on all sides by soldiers who were slightly taller than she, effectively blocking her from a shooter's line of sight.

Vascha felt the hands that held her loosen, and she did not waste the opportunity. She dropped to her knees, covered her head with her hands, and felt her skin absorb the light around her, allowing her to temporarily be forgotten as another trooper shuddered, a bullet from a rifle that had made no sound ripping into his head and ending his life. Then another fell. Then another.

Pandemonium erupted as the remaining three-dozen soldiers seemed to finally realize what was happening. Each raised their rifles, their instinct for self-preservation overriding whatever orders they'd been given, and began firing wildly into the cover the the trees that dominated both sides of the pathway, shredding the foliage in seconds with a deafening roar of electromagnetic rapports. Despite the onslaught, troopers continued to drop from perfect, silent headshots, and without the telltale crack of a rifle or a muzzle flash, there was very little they could do to triangulate where the shots were coming from. They seemed to be originating from all angles.

As though she'd been injected with some sort of drug, Vascha felt her strength and confidence returning to her by the second. She wasn't alone anymore. She wasn't defeated anymore. Her team was here now, and she knew they'd do everything they could to protect herself and Ben, just as she would do for them. A small grin played across her face, and so unfamiliar was the sensation of smiling that it actually made her cheeks sore. Sucking in more of the ambient light, feeling her skin cells become charged like solar panels, Vascha bounded to her feet and began scampering towards Ben, who had been dropped in the grass near the tree where she had left him.

* * *

><p>Ciara halted a moment and scanned the area with every one of her senses. Her brain was aflame with primal anger, capable of forming only the most basic of ideas, and right now the most clearly formed one in her head was blood, pain, and her desire for both of them. A part of her was aware of the fact that she had come to the far end of the parkway, where the colossal structure that contained the bridge was housed, but the part of her that was an animal discarded the knowledge outright. It was meaningless to her.<p>

Through the cover of some dense undergrowth, she spotted two genome troopers guarding a large metal door, their rifles hanging across their chests, standing at rested attention.

_Abominations. Destroy them._

She burst forth from the greenery like a cannonball, her body as low to the ground as possible, the grass rushing beneath her in a blur. A low, long growl bubbled from the back of her throat, a long, thin string of drool, pink with blood hung from her lower lip. She still could not see through her injured eye, but it did not matter.

The troopers spotted and heard her immediately, but she was beyond caring about that, and in no mental state to consider stealth beyond getting close enough to launch herself at them. They were laughably slow, painfully weak, and could not hope to match her.

The first drew a long, machete-sized blade from a sheath in the small of his back when he saw her approach, but he may as well have been moving in slow motion with the amount of pure, animal rage and what seemed like liters of adrenaline in Ciara's blood. She caught his swinging arms in her powerful hands and wrenched them down, breaking the bones and snapping the joints. She tore the weapon from his hands and drove the long blade up into his masked face, feeling the bones of his skull open with a satisfying pop.

A lance of pain rang out through her spine as the second soldier struck her with some kind of electrified cane, the stream of current shooting through her extremities. All it did was serve to enrage her further, and she pulled the blade from the dead soldier's skull and swung it like a baseball bat, with no regard for finesse or technique, catching the second trooper in the side of his head, burying the machete three inches into the armor and meat and bone. He shuddered a moment, blood spraying from the wound as the severed arteries flailed, then dropped to the ground in a heap.

Ciara was panting, giddy with bloodlust, her conscious mind still drowned in her feral insatiability and anger. She drew a long breath in through her nose, cataloging the scents that filtered into her superhuman olfactory organs, hungry for more prey, more monsters of science to exterminate.

There was a long, low hiss, and Ciara practically leapt in the air in surprise as the door behind her slid open along its rails.

Beyond the threshold of the large door was pitch darkness, so complete that even her keen eyes could not pierce it. She crouched low, ready to meet any threat, another low, guttural growl emanating from her throat.

"Hey, sport."

For a moment, Ciara's brain seemed to simply switch off, and she felt her arms suddenly drop to her sides, as though weights had been attached to them. The human part of her, that place that had been buried inside layers of predatory instinct, started to wake up.

No one called her 'sport.' No one except...

Then a ghost stepped out of the darkness.

This was not one of Sinister's abominations. She knew that immediately, and without question. The features that had been distorted by the cloning process, the strange smell of laboratories and medical instruments, the vacant, inhuman stare, all of that was absent from the man that stood before her. Instead, there was the smell of sweat and leather and a recently lit cigar. He walked towards her, his worn cowboy boots clicking dully on the metal floor, his posture relaxed, nonthreatening. He withdrew the stogie from his clenched teeth, tapping the ash onto the floor. He regarded it, blew on the smoldering tip, and replaced back into his mouth, puffing smoke that curled around his thick mutton chops and black, wolfish hair.

Ciara's heart leapt into her chest. This was... impossible. She knew that. Knew it with every fiber of her being... And yet, here he was. As though he had never even left them years ago. She felt her body wilt, and fought the tears that began to form in the corners of her eyes. Her knees felt as though they might give out at any moment. She opened her mouth, and her voice found its way out of her throat.

"...Master?"

Logan chuckled, drew again on his cigar, and held a rough, calloused hand out to her.

"Come on, kid, let's finish this. Together."

She hesitated. A part of her still protested as to the sheer impossibility of it all, but that voice was smothered almost instantly by the din of emotions that threatened to overwhelm her.

Ciara stepped forward, placed her hand in Logan's, and let him lead her into the darkness.

* * *

><p>Hunter's body seemed to complain with every movement he made. His muscles were tight and saturated with lactic acid from the near constant exertion over the past few hours, and he felt an ache growing behind his eyes from the subsequent dehydration. His neck and throat were by far the worst offenders; His trachea throbbed with a prickling, fiery intensity that did not cease, and his breathing still came in ragged, agonizing bursts. Frustratingly, it made his powers even more taxing to utilize. Despite the pain, he could not bend the air to his will without a steady stream of oxygen in his lungs; Holding his breath even for a few moments caused his connection with the surrounding atmosphere to flicker, and that wasn't acceptable. He needed total control. So he forced his swelling windpipe open and inhaled another deep, painful breath, and the air that buffeted his body glowed a phosphorescent blue, responding to his suggestions.<p>

He did not tell Rin that carrying her with him on an air current, low against the ground, their feet only a half meter above the grass, silent and quick as ghosts, was also taxing him to the point of physical pain. He had seen the grotesque puncture in her calf muscle that poured out blood despite the field dressing she had managed for it, and he would not make her skulk through the trees on an injured leg. Besides, she would have plenty of opportunity to abuse the mangled limb in the next few minutes.

"Ready?" he asked, his voice creaking and rasping uncharacteristically through the bruising forming on his neck.

Rin did not reply. Typical for her.

As per Gansükh's instructions, he had made a wide circle around Vascha and Ben's location on the pathway. Gan was creating confusion amongst the ranks of genome troopers with his rifle, silenced by his cloaking field, and Hunter and Rin would drive a knife right through their numbers, hopefully before they even knew what hit them. Hunter could hear the roar of gauss rifles as the troopers fired aimlessly in their desperation, and occasionally one of their bright bolts of electromagnetic energy zipped over their heads, but provided they didn't encounter the unluckiest shot in the world, they were in no real danger.

Hunter banked quickly, increased their speed, and in a flash of green foliage passing by, they were in the thick of it. Over twenty genome troopers stood in random formation all over the pathway, firing their weapons blindly into the trees. Amongst them lay the bodies of their fallen brethren, small holes in their helmeted heads leaking red onto the dirt and gravel path. In the distance, another soldier jerked as a bullet tore through the soft matter inside his skull.

It took a moment, but finally Hunter was able to pick out what he was looking for; It would have been nearly impossible for someone not accustomed to Vascha's powers, but Hunter was able to focus in on the black blur in his field of vision and peel through the layers of darkness she was applying over herself like thick oil paint smeared over reality. Gansükh had not been specific about what he'd seen through the scope of his rifle when he'd spotted them, but Hunter could tell by the tone of his voice that Vascha and Ben's situation had been dire, to say the least. Priority one was getting to them.

Rin did not hesitate, nor did Hunter. He allowed their bodies to drop the short distance to the ground and made a gesture at the nearest trooper. A hammer of air swept him off his feet, grabbed him like a huge fist, and drew him towards them. Rin did not waste any time, decapitating him with a swing of her long katana that was almost balletic in its grace. Again, Hunter had to suppress his amazement at how easily the sword cut through armor and muscle and bone, almost as though it was not there at all.

They had only moments before the entirety of the soldiers became aware of their presence, and they had to make it count. Before their first victim hit the dirt, Hunter had already zeroed in on another. He bent the air into a blade only several molecules thick, and threw it with all his strength. The razor-sharp wisp of air cleaved through a trooper's head, and continued onward, glancing through the flesh of another's shoulder.

"Behind you."

Rin's thin, hushed voice barely carried over the chaos around them, but Hunter's ears had been well-attuned over the years to hear her, and he responded to her warning without hesitation. He spun, saw a genome trooper bearing down on him, his rifle raised to bash him with the stock. Hunter lifted his muscled arms in a defensive block, grunting as the weapon struck the bones of his forearms, and pushed back with all the mental energy he could muster. The trooper flew backwards, carried by a current of blue-tinged air, directly onto Rin's katana.

Hunter turned back and continued forward through the mass of soldiers, who were slowly recognizing the new threat in their midst. Drawing on a strength that he was never even aware he had, fueled by concern for his teammates, he began tearing through every warm body that crossed his path. Thankfully, the troopers seemed to have recalled their orders from Sinister, and the majority had ceased their blind firing and slung their rifles, opting for the variety of melee weapons they carried to try and subdue them. Hunter's world became a blur of glowing blue air and streaks of blood, cutting and crushing and throwing aside anything in his vicinity. Between Rin and himself, troopers began dropping by the handful.

"Bitch!"

Hunter looked for the source of the outcry, and through the carnage her spotted the brunette woman that had been at Sinister's side at the outset of the battle. She was barreling toward the dark spot that was Vascha, who knelt beside Ben's prone form next to a nearby tree. In her hands, she held was looked like pairs of glistening knives, cocked for a killing blow. Vascha's head whipped around, saw the oncoming threat, and stood. But she did not look at the woman who was closing the distance at a flat run, but rather Hunter and Rin. She reached out a black hand towards them and opened her mouth:

"Sword!"

There was no questioning, no delay as Rin turned her ears towards Vascha's voice. She drew her shorter wakizashi from the sheath at her hip, spun, and threw it into the air. Hunter did the rest. He envisioned a hand in his mind, felt the atmosphere grip the weapon, and shot it at Vascha's open hand like a bullet from a gun.

The hilt of the short sword hit Vascha's palm with a slap, and her fingers closed around it. Swords were not their leader's weapon of choice, but, like all of them, Logan had drilled their use into her head for countless hours. She was as proficient as any of them with such a weapon, surpassed only by the preternatural ability of Rin. She gripped the sword in both hands, twisted, and brought the blade up in a defensive posture.

The blades in the brunette's hands met the metal of the sword with a resounding clang, and from Hunter's vantage point, he could just make out the expression of pure shock on the woman's face.

_Why?_ Hunter wondered, _Why be surprised about that?_

There was no time to ponder the answer though, as Vascha turned again, repositioned her body as quick as lightening, taking advantage of the woman's sudden surprise. With a blindingly fast swing, she took the brunette's left arm clean off, the wakizashi slicing through the limb easily, near the shoulder.

The brunette seemed stupefied for a moment, staring at the empty space that her limb had formerly occupied, then collapsed to her knees, a long, almost animalistic shriek escaping her lips. She put her remaining hand over the stump where her left arm used to be, futilely attempting to staunch the sudden, heavy blood flow.

Vascha stood, the blade of the short sword pointed at the woman's face. She raised the weapon, ready to take the brunette's head off.

"For Logan," Hunter heard her snarl, even over the din of battle.

Without warning, the entire structure of The Ark seemed to shudder and groan, causing every person standing to buckle their legs as the ground beneath them quaked. The trooper that has rushed towards Hunter, one of the last to still be intact enough to pose a threat, fell to the ground as he lost his footing, and just as Hunter was once again preparing to summon a blade of air to dispatch him, a silent bullet tore through his head, killing him instantly. Hunter looked in the direction where he thought the shot might have come from, and gestured thanks at the Mongolian sniper.

Gansükh was not the only one to take advantage of the sudden confusion, and the brunette, to Hunter's outright shock, took the opportunity to grab her severed arm from the pool of blood it lay in, and leapt into the cover of the trees at a speed that seemed impossible for someone who'd just found themselves short a limb.

Hunter took a moment to take stock of their surroundings. Dozens of genome troopers littered the ground around him. So much blood had been spilled that the pathway seemed to be paved in crimson gravel. Those that weren't dead outright still shifted as they attempted to return to fighting form, even while they bled out onto the dirt. Rin set about the task of cleanup, calmly walking to each barely living soldier and stabbing them through the brain with her dagger-sized tanto.

For what seemed like the first time in hours, Hunter felt as though he might be able to relax. He massaged his neck, still aflame with pain, and slowly walked towards Vascha, only now becoming aware of the deep soreness that radiated through his legs and up his back, adding to the long list of hurts that inhabited his body.

Vascha did not look at him, but stared at the patch of trees that the brunette had disappeared into, her black eyes mere slits, her lip curling in anger. Her hands squeezed the hilt of the wakizashi so tightly that the sharkskin hilt crackled and squeaked.

"Vasch'?"

Only then did Vascha seem to realize Hunter was there, and she regarded him almost with surprise.

"Help me with him," she jerked her head towards Ben's prone form.

Hunter was close enough now that he could fully absorb his teammates' condition, and he felt a growing concern as he surmised their wounds. Ben was barely conscious, a thermal patch affixed to his abdomen, a large, ugly bruise forming on the side of his face, and a deep puncture in the meat of his arm, which hung limply at his side. Vascha's wounds were more difficult to see, her black blood camouflaged against her skin, but Hunter was adept at looking through the diffusing quality of her powers. He could see a veritable latticework of lacerations all over he body, bleeding freely and unbandaged.

"You look like hell," Hunter croaked through his bruised trachea, bending down to help her lift Ben over their shoulders.

"You should talk," called a familiar voice behind him

Hunter craned his neck to see that Gansükh had materialized in the middle of the carnage. He casually inspected his rifle, noticed some indiscernible blemish on the barrel, and wiped it with his thumb. Rin walked up from behind him, and Vascha tossed the short sword in her direction. Rin caught the weapon without looking, without needing to, and flicked the droplets of blood from the blade, and replaced it into its sheathe.

"What was that noise?" Ben asked groggily.

"I have an idea," Vascha said, "And its not a good one."

"The Ark is powering up," Gansükh confirmed, "We've run out of time, Vasch'. Whatever we're going to do, we need to do it now."

Vascha did not reply, but again stared into the trees where the brunette had escaped from the fray. Her jaw seemed to ripple as she ground her teeth in frustration.

"We should take care of those cuts," Gansükh gazing at the multiple gashes and stabs in Vascha's body.

"I'm fine," Vascha snapped, still staring into the undergrowth.

"Who was she, anyway?" Hunter probed.

"X-23."

The answer stunned them, and several seconds passed before any of them said a word.

"That explains the claws in her..." Hunter began, then turned towards Rin, "Wait, that means... Your swords are _adamantium_?"

Rin simply nodded and touched her katana's hilt, "A farewell gift from Madame Yuriko."

Gansükh whistled with new admiration for the weapons that hung at the Japanese girl's side.

Hunter looked back at Vascha, "But how did you know?"

"I know the sound of adamantium anywhere," Vascha shrugged, still not looking at him, "I do sleep with Logan's claws in my hands."

"What the hell is X-23 even doing here?" Gansükh asked, slinging his rifle over his shoulder.

"I don't know," Vascha admitted, allowing Hunter to take the bulk of Ben's weight as she bent down and collected Logan's twin blades. One she found strewn in the grass by the tree, the other was lodged into her discarded rifle. Vascha wrenched it from the ruined weapon and replaced both into their sheathes at her hip. She bent down again and picked up one of her harnesses that had been similarly cast aside in the grass and shrugged into it. The harness held two under-arm holsters, a pistol secured in each, and Vascha drew each one in turn, checking for damage on the guns themselves, then ejecting the clips and inspecting the rounds within before replacing the weapons into the harness.

Hunter could not be sure, but he had the distinct impression that Vascha had been rattled by her encounter with Logan's legendary clone assassin. They way she would not meet their gazes for more than a second or two, the way her whole body seemed to hum with nervous energy, it was not like her. Something about the fight had spooked her. Vascha was posturing, putting a noticeable effort into appearing unscathed, and that was unusual in their team leader.

_Things must have been even worse than Gan let on_, he mused.

"I don't care, either," Vascha continued, "She said she was there when Logan died, so I'm taking her out, same as Sinister. One way or another."

_No,_ Hunter thought,_ I don't like how she's sounding at all._

"Our priority is Sinister," Rin reminded her, the new information apparently not phasing the diminutive Japanese mutant, though Hunter knew it resonated with her as much as it did any of them, "And stopping The Ark from launching."

"Which we are currently failing at," Hunter pointed out, noting another, smaller shudder echoing through the massive structure of the airship as its systems came to life, "We've only got twenty minutes, tops, before this thing is fully operational. The drones, the guns, the missiles, Sinister will have them all, and that's if General Cole and SHIELD don't just decide to nuke this whole thing. We need a plan. And we need it now."

Vascha snorted, "They won't nuke it. They want this thing back badly. You could probably fill a book with all the details they decided to leave out about this thing. This whole op stinks to high hell. Why not tell us about X-23? Why not prepare us better for the genome troopers by telling us they can regenerate? Why not use their own strike teams? Whatever is going on here, they need this ship, and they need Sinister to believe they weren't involved if we screw the pooch. That's why Travis slipped me the explosives to disable it if all else failed. You remember what he said in the launch room of the Helicarrier when he gave them to me; 'SHIELD would never sanction this.' If they don't want even a small section of this thing blown up, they certainly can't afford to nuke it, and they can't afford to be in Sinister's cross-hairs if this mission goes south. That's why they needed us in the first place."

"On that subject," Gansükh said, "Where is Ciara?"

As though on cue, a long, resounding electronic chime sounded throughout the parkway, echoing against the massive domed ceiling. It repeated several times before finally silencing, and Hunter felt his body tense against the unfamiliar noise.

"Sons of Logan!"

Each of them, with the exception of Rin, jerked their heads upwards to face the booming voice that roared through The Ark's public address system. Even Ben seemed to have regained his senses and craned his neck upwards.

Above them, projected on a screen that took up nearly one hundred feet squared against the domed ceiling of the parkway, was the grinning, ghost-like face of Sinister smiling enigmatically as he gazed down at them. The image, large as it was, appeared slightly pixelated, but the effect was nonetheless unsettling to have the face of their enemy looming over their heads. Hunter was shocked to see that, with the exception of a small residual ring of grey on his pale forehead, Sinister seemed to have completely recovered from having a section of his head blown clean off by Gansükh's bullet.

Sinister grinned, his teeth like small, pointed pearls between lips so dark they were nearly black.

"You have failed."


	22. Between Vipers and Vultures

All things considered, Ben supposed that things weren't as bad as they could be, as long as he kept into account that he could very well have been dead if his teammates and sheer, dumb luck had not intervened. That really did not change the fact that he felt far worse than he ever remembered feeling. His innards seemed to have been replaced with ropes of fire, his eye and cheek were swelling from the vicious backhand he'd been dealt by a genome trooper, and his arm refused to obey his instructions, pierced as it was through the muscle and tendon of his tricep. Encompassing all of that was the lump of concrete that seemed to be forming somewhere by his heart as he took real stock of their situation.

In truth, the only thing that kept him standing at the moment was the support of Hunter, the other boy's powerful figure keeping him up with relative ease; Ben's good arm flung over Hunter's shoulder, holding him aloft. Ben was grateful for that, at least. For some reason, standing on his feet as Sinister's face loomed down on them was slightly more bearable than it would have been if he'd been prone in the dirt. He would have felt infinitely more helpless than he did now. And right now, he felt pretty fucking helpless.

Ben watched the giant projection on the domed ceiling above them, fighting every urge to rest his aching eyes as the effects of shock still pestered the back of his brain. Sinister's white face drew into a cruel smile once again as he leaned back in his high leather chair, steepling his pale fingers beneath his goateed chin as he spoke.

"I admit that the ruse was clever," he mused, as though he was lecturing a class of children, "SHIELD would have given anything to avoid incriminating themselves in this attack, conveniently timed as it was. Even in the event of your failure or your deaths, nothing on your persons is enough to make me think that SHIELD would have ultimately been responsible for the assault. Your... shall we say, _inclination for vengeance_ against me notwithstanding, your armaments and field gear could have been acquired anywhere on the black market, even the CHB harnesses, to a limited extent. Clever."

Ben, along with nearly every other team member present, stiffened as Sinister laid bare the name of their benefactor. There was no possible way that he could have come across that information. There was simply no way he could have known that SHIELD had been the architect of their operation, barring some turncoat within the organization's ranks. But if that had been the case, their initial attack would not have been possible in the first place.

"Vascha..." Hunter began.

"Quiet!" their leader snapped, her voice barely above a whisper, "Let the windbag talk."

Ben broke his gaze from the projection to quickly glance at Vascha. She was tense, that much could be expected from the near defeat she had suffered at the hands of X-23, but there was an anxious energy, a manic rage that was buzzing through her frame that made him nervous. He had never seen her so on edge.

"Sadly, your quest for vengeance has come to an end," Sinister continued, "The Ark is mine to command now, and despite your expertise in dispatching my foot soldiers and temporarily interrupting my plans, there is realistically nothing you can do to change the course of events from this point forward. I recommend you use your little teleportation gadgets while you have the opportunity, and run back to your handlers like the trained dogs that you are. And when you finally see the wisdom of my grand design, you will of course be welcomed into our ranks with open arms.

"Unless, of course," Sinister unclasped his hands and spread his arm in an amicable gesture, "You have already grown weary of being pawns in the games of men playing at power in a world that no longer recognizes their particular brand of strength. The world is on the cusp of change, both violent and radical, my fellow children of the atom, and you would do well to align yourselves properly while the currents still gather. There is simply no future to be had in the world of mankind. You will find the transition significantly more... crowded later on. Would it really be so hard to swallow your pride and admit that, even in your quest for revenge, you are still fighting on the side of humans, who have a colorful history of using and abandoning mutants?

"Verily, you are in all likelihood wondering to yourselves how I managed to unravel SHIELD's deception so quickly, when you yourselves have done a commendable job of executing your orders swiftly and effectively," Sinister grinned again, "The truth, Sons of Logan, is far simpler than you might be expecting."

Whoever was operating the camera, whether the device was automated or operated by one of Sinister's lackeys, Ben could not tell, zoomed out and panned to Sinister's left. Though the lens had not yet adjusted for the varying distance of subjects, Ben could tell through the camera's momentary blur that, several yards behind Sinister, someone sat struggling against some form of restraint on the floor. As the camera quickly adjusted, the image began to sharpen and take shape. Ben sucked in air before the image was even fully legible. It could only be one person.

"No!" he heard Vascha hiss, the rage in her voice palpable.

"Ciara!" Gansükh called out, despite Vascha's instructions to remain quiet.

Ciara sat in a crumpled heap, her arms and legs bound with some sort of metallic cord, maybe even vibranium wire, as she raised her head to look into the camera, shame and pain etched in her visage. Ben felt Hunter grunt in anger as their teammate's face came into focus; Her features were a mash of bruises and swelling flesh and red, angry welts, her hair was plastered to her scalp with dark, crusting blood, and one of her eyes was nothing but a dark pit of gore amidst a field of wicked burns and lacerations along one side of her head. Along her lip were newer wounds, splits that Ben recognized as the product of sustained beating. Her one remaining eye was glassy and distant, and not at all possessing the fiery intensity that Ben had come to associate with the bestial young woman.

"Guys..." she croaked, her voice dry and hoarse and labored, "Guys, I fucked up... You need to get out of here. Do you hear me? Vascha, you need to get them out of here. Right now. Sinister is a telepath. I don't know how. I don't know why they didn't warn us, but he can get into our heads. He knows... Everything. You need to get out of here. Please! I've seen what he has planned! He's the one who-"

Somewhere off-camera, the armored arm of a genome trooper lashed out and caught Ciara in the side of the temple with a stun cane. Ben winced, remembering the inhuman strength of the hand that had dealt him a similar blow across his cheek. Ciara spat blood and glared at the figure beyond the view of the camera before she was forcibly lifted and dragged to some unseen corner of the room.

The camera returned its focus to Sinister, pale and smirking as he crossed his arms.

"I will admit," he said, "That my newfound abilities as a telepath are rather rudimentary at this point. Nowhere even close to the sublime power of the late, great Professor Xavier or his protege Mrs Grey-Summers. Since I first was aware of your presence on my vessel I have been trying to access each of your minds, but the money that your protector Madame Yuriko dolled out having your minds shielded from probing was well-spent, it would seem. It was not until I realized that I could coax your young comrade here into a primal frenzy by means of my genome troopers that I could access the deeper levels of her unconscious. Rather fascinating stuff, really. I was able to implant images and emotions into her head as easily as though she were a simple beast. Not unlike my associate Hairbag, actually. Whom, incidentally, she managed to put in the infirmary. In fact, all of my Nasty Boys, as well as Ms. Kinney are currently in various stages of intensive care. Most unfortunate. Not that it makes much difference. Once I am done with your comrade Ciara, she will make a more than adequate addition to our ranks.

"No," Sinister sighed lackadaisically, crossing his arms, as though already bored by the conversation, "I'm afraid you have indeed failed, Sons of Logan. Despite your proclivity for bloodshed and violence, which I admit has been a rather sizable inconvenience for me, this conflict is rather above your heads, set into motion before your parents' parents were born.

"You have two options," he said, raising his fingers to count as he spoke, "One, you leave my Ark now, and I can promise you that nothing will happen to you that you cannot survive by your own means. Two, you submit to my new regime, and we forget that all of this unpleasantness ever occurred. Of course, I don't very well expect that after all of Logan's brainwashing that you'll simply roll over, so really, you only have one option, don't you?"

Sinister leaned in to the camera's frame, his dark, inhuman eyes taking up most of the gigantic screen as he sneered into the lens.

"The end of this transmission will mark your final warning," he said, "Your move, dogs of Logan."

There was some form of commotion off camera, and Sinister turned to see the source of the disturbance. The camera panned to the side as well, just in time for them to see Ciara, still bound, but with her legs wrapped around a genome trooper's waist, biting the man in the neck. He was too heavily armored for her to pierce his flesh with her teeth, but she could very easily crush his trachea if she found purchase in the right place.

Another trooper grabbed her by her blood-soaked hair and snapped her head back. Ciara grunted, but did not cry out in pain. Instead, she looked into the eye of the camera.

"Forget about me," she shouted, "He _wants_ you to come to the bridge! Don't play into it! Get out of here! Get SHIELD to blow this fucker off the map! I don't care how, just do it! It all comes back to Terminus! Don't you get it? It all-"

The projection went dead, replaced once again with the mock-sky blue of The Ark's dome.

A long moment passed where none of them spoke, even dared to move, as Sinister's words and Ciara's final warning sunk in.

Rin finally broke the lapse by drawing her sword, walking towards the motionless body of a genome trooper, and slicing the mask clean off of his head.

Each of them sucked in a breath as the distorted, pale face of their master stared back of them.

"What. The. Fuck." Hunter growled, ending the silence.

"I had detected something strange about them some time ago," Rin explained before any of them found the need to ask, "And when Sinister alluded to the genome troopers being a source of his driving Ciara into a frenzy... I suppose I knew for awhile now, subconsciously."

Gansükh nodded grimly, "They move almost exactly like he did. Same basic height and build. Their healing factor is just as impressive. I don't know why I didn't make the connection. Once you know, it's hard not to see."

"None of us did see it though," Vascha said, an odd tone in her voice as she walked to the corpse who's face Rin had revealed, kneeling down and touching the body with one hand, "But I'm willing to bet SHIELD knew about this. Hell, I bet these... _things_ were their idea."

Without warning, Vascha growled, grabbed the body of the fallen genome trooper, the pale clone of their long-dead master, and with a strength Ben did not know she still had in her, lifted the dead weight of the man and threw him bodily into the trunk of a nearby tree, a long howl of rage breaking through her lips as she clenched her black teeth with the effort. The clone's body crumpled awkwardly against the tree and fell again to the ground with a thud. Vascha drew one of her pistols, clicked off the safety, and walked towards the dead body, shooting it once, twice, three times in the face before Gansükh rushed to her side and grasped her wrist in his hand, pulling the pistol up and away from her target.

"Waste of ammo," he insisted, trying to reestablish Vascha's grip on the present with a tactical, detached observation, though clearly he was just as shaken by the revelation as any of them.

Vascha stared at the Mongolian as though she had forgotten he was there, and without a word of comment, clicked the pistol's safety back on and replaced the weapon in its holster.

"What do we do, Vasch'? What did Ciara mean by everything coming back to Terminus?" Ben asked, hoping that asking the Russian girl's counsel would keep her from succumbing to another uncharacteristic outburst. Seeing Logan's face on these dead soldiers was painful to the point of real physical discomfort; Ben's guts still twisted and writhed in anger, but Ciara and Vascha's appreciation for the man had been at the level of zealotry, and Ben had a distinct impression that there was not much more mental strain Vascha could endure before she too found herself launched into a frenzy.

Before she could answer, there was a long, low chime in Ben's ear. It was a moment before Ben realized that it was from the radio he still wore in his ear.

"Speak of the devil," Hunter remarked, "SHIELD's calling."

Gansükh, seeing that Vascha's radio had been discarded, reached into one of the many pockets on his uniform and produced a backup. Vascha wordlessly plucked it from his hand and shoved the device onto her head, slipping the transmitter down and over her neck before clicking the dial to long-range mode. Ben did the same with his, as did each of the team members, so that they could listen in on the conversation.

"This is Black," Vascha said, one hand over her ear, "Speak."

"Black, this is Agent Travis," the young SHIELD agent's voice was distant and slightly distorted, as though someone had placed a flange effect on his voice. Ben guessed that the Helicarrier's radio engineers were having some difficulty getting the transmission through The Ark's many sources of interference. "I need a status report and I need it five minutes ago, because from up here things are not looking good."

"Things are not good, Travis," Vascha said, and Ben wondered if Travis was familiar enough with her voice to detect the venom dripping from her words, "Things are about as far from good as I can imagine."

"Details! I need details," came Travis' reply, the man apparently oblivious to the tones of anger in Vascha's voice, or perhaps simply ignoring it, "We're getting reports that The Ark has fired up. If that's true, we only have a few minutes before Sinister is in total control. Now tell me, are you close to resolving the situation? Can you get to Sinister?"

Vascha did not answer immediately, pausing to look into the faces of each of her teammates. Ben could practically see the machinery of her mind at work as she then turned and looked up at the bridge of The Ark, which loomed over the parkway like a skyscraper. Ben knew what Vascha was trying to calculate, and worked the same figures that she was crunching. He'd seen the same schematics, studied the same defensive countermeasures. Could they reach Sinister now that he'd secured his position of power within the massive airship? The interior of The Ark was a tactical nightmare of tight corridors and wide-open rooms with minimal cover. To make a bad situation worse, cameras and sensors mapped nearly every corner of the airship, and with so few people occupying it, it would be nearly impossible to approach the bridge without being picked up by some form of surveillance. Logan had trained them well, but were they equipped to stage a full-on siege of a fortified position?

"No," Vascha answered finally, and Ben could see the words tasted sour in her mouth, "Primary objective is a failure. My team cannot reach Sinister within the bridge."

Each team member looked at her with a mixture of shock and confusion, then finally resignation. While Ben could not for the life of him find any scrap of intel that would prove Vascha wrong, it stung to hear her say it out loud. It was true. They had been given perhaps their only golden opportunity to avenge Logan, and they had botched it.

There was a long pause as this information was digested on the other side of the radio frequency. The light hiss of static filled their ears for what seemed an eternity.

Finally, Travis' voice cut in again, tones of obvious strain and anxiety in his words. He spoke in hushed whisper, as though he was concerned about being overheard.

"Black, you are to proceed immediately to engine room three on sub-deck ten. Consider your primary mission aborted. Deliver the payload and return to base ASAP. Priority one is now disabling The Ark."

"Yeah..." Vascha took a moment and looked at each of them in turn, "I'm not going to do that, Travis. To be perfectly honest with you, it really doesn't concern me very much who is in charge of The Ark, or whether it's running or not. Your oversized toy has never been _our_ main objective. And considering you've kept us out of the loop on some... _pretty key_ information from the start, I'd say I'm done sticking my neck out for you. You want the engine room blown up? Strap a bomb to _your_ chest and come down here yourself."

There was silence, followed by muffled sounds of movement on the other end of the transmission. Finally, a new voice came on, this one more measured and relaxed than Travis', but with still obvious signs of stress below the surface.

"Black, this is General Cole," the Helicarrier commander's voice crackled in their ears, his words carefully measured and concise, "I don't think I need to remind you that, in the event of your total failure of missions objectives, I need only my own authorization to launch a nuclear strike on The Ark and the outlying facility, whether you're on it or not. I'm also not obligated in any way to make good on your 'payment' for your services."

"Oh _please_," Vascha cut him short, "I'm through with the pseudo-doomsday posing and strutting. If you ever intended on nuking this thing, it would have been the moment you realized that Sinister had killed all of your personnel. I don't care how much money you've invested in this thing, you could never allow it to fall so perfectly into the hands of a loose cannon like Sinister. You've reminded us countless times that this thing is a fucking mobile _nation state_. A fortress the likes of which the world has never seen. You should have pulled the plug as soon as Sinister started to smell of a traitor ...Unless there's something about this ship and Sinister's work on it that's so important, so remarkably integral to SHIELD's continued operations, that you would trust it to him even when his intentions started to become dark. And yes, I mean besides the fact that he's in control of a small army of Wolverine's clones.

"So what it is?" Vascha pressed, "What is so goddamned important about this thing that you're willing to defend it even in the hands of an enemy? Because between that and your intel completely dropping the fucking ball, you've got us good and screwed here, _General_. Am I being vague? I'll say it plainly: What aren't you telling us about The Ark? What aren't you telling us about Terminus and Ominous? I need an answer right now or we walk."

Ben was careful to note that Vascha made no mention of Ciara being taken a hostage, nor that Sinister was now aware of SHIELD's involvement in their attempt on his life.

Again, their ears were met with only the void of static. It lasted so long that Ben was halfway certain that the connection had been cut. When finally Cole did speak, it almost took him by surprise.

"Now you listen to me, girl-"

"My team is coming in," Vascha snapped, cutting the man off again, "We're done with this operation. You can clean up your own mess. Have medical personnel waiting for us."

Vascha clicked her headset completely off and motioned the others to do the same. They did.

"Vascha," Hunter said as soon as their words could not be overheard by SHIELD's ears, "We can't just leave her here!"

The others nodded in consent. Ciara's plight had never left the forefront of Ben's mind.

"We're not," Vascha said, matter-of-factly, "But we can't get to her. Not like this."

It took them a moment, but finally Gansükh grunted as he understood. "We can't _all_ get to her, you mean."

Their field leader nodded and gestured at the parkway that surrounded them, "It was different out here, with cover and concealment and the element of surprise. In the interior of the ship, with his soldiers and all of The Ark's defenses at his disposal, our kind of fight will be impossible. We're a strike unit, not a siege team. Only a small, one or two man force could hope to make it to the bridge."

It was cold, hard logic. One of Vascha's best traits, and one of the reasons she had been viewed as an unofficial team leader in the minds of her comrades. Not for prowess in battle, or for her ability to inspire (though she still managed to do that on occasion), but her willingness to make disconnected, logical, tactical assessments. The idea of one of their comrades in enemy hands made each of them burn with anger and desire for immediate, brutal action, but Vascha was the first to ascertain that going in guns blazing, while it had been effective to a point, was no longer the answer.

That didn't mean any of them liked it.

"Fine," Hunter said, "But the rest of us should still stay here and try to disable The Ark."

"To serve what purpose?" Vascha replied, "To get more of us captured? To make sure that we never leave this place alive? This whole operation has blown up in our faces, and you know what? It's not because of Mister-fucking-Sinister. Its because of SHIELD. Even if we could disable this ship, even if Sinister popped out of thin air right here, right now, we know now that there's not a damn thing any of us could do to kill him. That's SHIELD's fault, and I want to know why. I want to know, because knowing everything about what Sinister and SHIELD really got up to before we were brought in is what's going to help us kill him. I don't give a shit about this ship or whether or not it can fly.

"So you're going back to the Helicarrier," Vascha finished, "And you're going to ask them. And you're not going to do it nicely."

"You want us to 'port to SHIELD's command ship and start making demands?" Gansükh asked, then grinned sardonically, "Sounds easier than killing a guy that can shrug off having his skull blown apart."

"What about Sinister's threat to nuke the coast if he found out about SHIELD's involvement?" Hunter asked.

"There is nothing we could do about that now," Rin answered, "Even if we wanted to stop him, that still means getting to the bridge, which all of us cannot do. Even if we wanted to disable his battery of missiles, none of us has the technical knowledge or capability to do so without Sinister finding out first."

"So we just let it happen?" Hunter rubbed his forehead.

"It's not in our control, or let it happen or not happen," Gansükh said, now seeming to share some of Vascha's growing outrage at the amount of intel that had been left out of their briefing, but also distinctly morose at the idea of innocents dying because of their own inability to take Sinister out, "This is on SHIELD's head."

"We're now in retreat and rescue mode," Vascha said, "I know it hurts, guys. You know I do. But without knowing what's really going on here, we're just stumbling around in the dark, and we're all going to get ourselves killed or captured like this. We get Ciara back, we put pressure on SHIELD brass, and then we come back for Sinister when we're not handcuffed by bureaucratic bullshit and..." Vascha sneered at the nearby body of a genome trooper and pointed, "By surprises like this."

"Travis told us more than once," Rin intoned, "That once this ship has taken off, there will be little we can do to gain access to it again."

"We'll take care of that, somehow," Vascha said, then turned and smiled humorlessly at Ben, "Won't we Aretz?"

It took Ben a long moment to realize what Vascha was implying, and when he finally did, he opened his mouth to speak. Hunter beat him to it.

"Vascha," his teammate said cautiously, then cleared his throat, his voice still slightly hoarse beneath the ugly bruising on his neck, "He's not in the best of shape."

Ben lifted his arm from Hunter's shoulder and put his full weight on both of his feet, testing his balance warily.

"I don't know if you noticed," he said, patting Hunter on his broad back back, doing his best to hide the intense weariness that weighed down his whole body, trying to add levity that he did not feel, "But none of us are."

"It's how it has to be," Vascha said, "The CHB batteries are linked to three harnesses each, which are in turn locked into our biometric signatures. You can switch the battery unit around, but you can't change who goes and who stays. I can get into that bridge, and Ben is coming with me. Gan, Rin, and Hunter, you're going back to the Helicarrier. Once we have Ciara, we'll follow you."

A tense silence passed between them for several heartbeats as they each weighed the new properties of the mission. Things had spiraled so wildly out of their control that it was difficult to tell now what the correct course of action was. Of course they all wanted to stay, and of course none of them wanted anything more than to avenge the memory of their teacher and just go the hell home, but the situation had become infinitely more complex than that now, and though they hated to admit it, this was not a scenario that they could simply mow through with, as Logan had once quipped, "Blunt force an' ignorance."

"I don't like it," Gansükh said flatly.

"I'm not asking you to like it," Vascha replied, but with more softness than her choice of words might have implied, "I'm asking all of us to just think for a minute. Logan would spin in his grave if he saw us trying to honor his memory by bashing our heads into a brick wall to get to the other side. We need to regroup, reassess, and see if we can't just find a door to walk through."

"What's to stop you from trying some stupid thing like taking Sinister out yourself when you get up there?" the Mongolian asked warily, eyeing her.

"Sanity," Vascha replied with a crooked, humorless smile, then looked at Ben, "And Ben."

Gansükh and Hunter both sighed, then nodded consent almost in unison. Rin never usually betrayed her feelings with such obvious physical intonations, but nevertheless looked almost as perturbed as her male counterparts, which was really saying something as to how agitated she must have felt.

Ben took several steps forward and came to Vascha's side. It was not until he was mere feet from her that he could just barely make out small specks of blackened moisture at the corners of her eyes. Tears of... what? Frustration? Pain? Either seemed likely, and he made a point not to let her know that he had seen them.

"Are you okay for this?" he asked, intentionally masking the question in a veneer of nonchalance.

Vascha simply crossed her arms and nodded.

Hunter, Ganükh and Rin each gathered around each other, close enough for the charge of the battery Gansükh wore in the curve of his spine to reach the unique harnesses they each wore. Ben felt the weight and heat of his own battery, which Vascha had transferred to him before her fight with X-23.

Abruptly, Gansükh broke away from the group and stepped towards Vascha.

"I know how you feel about her," he said, almost sheepishly, as though he were discussing some deep, personal secret of his own, "About Ciara, I mean."

Vascha didn't offer a reply, and simply returned Gansükh's stare. It wasn't exactly an established fact that the Russian mutant had once fostered an unrequited crush on Ciara, as neither had ever discussed it openly, but it wasn't as though it hadn't been obvious in the team's formative years; Vascha had trailed the ursine girl almost everywhere. In the end though, it seemed as though Vascha had simply made the logical conclusion, as was her forte; She was a lesbian, but Ciara wasn't. The two had always gotten along fine, and there had never even been a hint of tension between them. But still, Ben couldn't help but feel something resonate in Gansükh's words, and in Vascha's lack of a response.

"Just... Don't do anything crazy to get her back," the Mongolian shrugged, "She'd never live it down."

Finally, Vascha nodded, and the small black flecks that Ben recognized as tears resurfaced in the corners of her hard, black eyes. "I know."

Gansükh offered an open hand to her.

"We'll see you when you get back," he said, "_All_ of you."

Vascha nodded, grasping the boy's hand and shaking it once, "_Da, comrade_."

Gansükh returned to his place with Hunter and Rin, roughly five yards distant, and reached awkwardly behind his back. There was a click, a low hum of energy, and their bodies began to sizzle and pop with radiating energy, though if it made them in any way uncomfortable, they didn't show it.. An arc of purple light snaked between the three teammates, licking across their bodies like electricity for a moment before growing in size and intensity, seeming to swallow the three up in a wash of violet energy. Through the light, Ben could just make out Hunter raising his hand in a wave. And then, with a bright flash and a noise like a thunderclap, they had vanished, the only evidence of their having been there taking the form of a smoldering section of dirt where their feet had been.

"You can relax now," Vascha said, "They're gone."

Ben didn't question her, and let his exhausted, depleted body slump with a sigh of both discomfort and relief. He had not wanted his teammates to worry about him as they departed, and had been downplaying his injuries. Vascha knew better, had seen his wounds up close and personal, and could tell just how much pain he was really in. He tried again to flex the muscles of his lacerated arm and winced as deep thorns of pain twisted, setting his nerves ablaze.

"I'll be okay," Ben grimaced as he placed a hand over his bandaged abdomen, "I can do this."

"You can barely stand."

Vascha's words were as always concise and to the point, but Ben found himself wishing that she would have pulled that verbal punch just a little bit.

"No," he persisted, "I can still..."

"Ben," Vascha put a hand on his shoulder, "I'm sorry."

It took Ben a moment to realize she was not speaking in generalities. She was being specific about something.

He felt her bare hand, still slightly sticky with blood, both hers and theirs, clasp around his and urge him to face her.

Ben had always felt a certain kinship towards the Russian girl. He was as close with each member of the team as he had ever been with his own family, but in the years that had gone by, he found that he and Vascha shared a kind of rapport that had not come nearly as easily with Logan's other students. They were both quiet, reserved individuals, who internalized their frustration and pain at the hand they'd been dealt in life. Ben had lost the chance to pursue a normal existence with his own family, who still lived, as far as he knew, with the exception of his two sisters who had been killed just before he'd left, in Israel, where human and mutant fighting had been particularly brutal. He had been forced to sever contact with his parents and extended kin out of fear for their safety when he's thrown his lot in with Logan and what few X-Men had survived in those days, and even now was not sure if they still lived, or if they even thought about him. The idea of being able to return to them was part of what kept him on his feet and ready to go forward with the mission even now. His place was by his father and mother's side, but it was dangled out of his reach nearly every day of his life.

Vascha had similarly had her life taken from her, but with a brutal finality that few people, even her comrades, could relate to. Ben did not know the particulars beyond what had been mentioned in passing by both Vascha and Logan, but what he did know seemed horrible beyond belief. She had watched her parents being gunned down by military personnel when she was barely more than a girl, and had suffered the fate of living out some of her formative years in a mutant internment camp. What went on in those places, especially in America, where the country's collapse had made its government facilities brutal, cruel, and evil places, made Ben's stomach tighten whenever he thought about it. For the first year that Ben had known her, she seemed a husk of a person, endlessly introverted and suspicious, even of fellow mutants. Even when she'd begun to open up, there was a prolonged and deep sadness to her persona that few could relate to. Ben could. And while they had never bonded by sharing stories of their mutual pain, they both seemed to sense the same dark pit in each other's psyche's that had eventually grown into a quiet respect, and then a tacit understanding that they would always be there for one another. They'd never sought a friendship from one another. It had simply happened.

Ben supposed that, on his own end, Vascha took the place of the sisters he had lost, and thus felt a need to keep her from harm, even though in many cases she had been the one protecting him as much as he did her. Put plainly, Ben liked Vascha, and as far as he could tell, she liked and trusted him.

In the future, Ben would look back at the next few minutes in agonizing detail on an almost daily basis, wondering if there had been some clue, some sign that Vascha gave as to what she was about to do. And each time he would be frustrated by the knowledge that there was none. In his darkest moments, he viewed it as a strange kind of betrayal, some slight against the trust he placed in her not to deceive him, though he knew exactly why she did it. On his more optimistic days, he recognized that Vascha had done what she was about to do out of protection for him. He was in no real shape to fight, even if he did not admit it and Rin, Hunter, and Gansükh did not immediately recognize it. She viewed it as saving him, though Ben had never asked her to do it.

"What?" Ben asked cautiously as Vascha stared into his features longer than he was comfortable with. Her large, black eyes sometimes caught the tiniest glimmer and refracted like quartz before her mutant ability sucked the light back in, as though it thirsted for it.

She suddenly drew him in and embraced him. Ben stiffened with discomfort. Vascha had never embraced him like this, unless in some jest or, as had been the case in the bar in Thailand, what seemed like ages ago, as some kind of cover or ruse, and the sensation made him instantly wary. Slowly, as though he had never hugged someone before, he wrapped his arms around her small shoulders and returned the gesture.

"I'll find a way to get Ciara out," she said, her lips brushing against the hair on his neck, "I promise."

Ben was about to question the strange remark when he felt something click and then hum with warmth in the small of his back.

His head snapped around, trying to see what the sensation was, but he already knew. Vascha had clicked on the CHB battery secured to his harness. Already it began to crackle with purple energy.

She quickly broke the embrace and stepped several paces back, looking at him with an expression that was at the same time grim and baleful.

"Vasch'?" Ben said, more panic in his voice than he would have liked. He tried to reach behind him, to shut off the battery, but his injuries made bending that way an impossibility.

"I'm sorry," she said again, but Ben did not understand. Ciara was too far away for the battery's energy to catch a hold of her harness and bring her back with them, but Vascha was only a few feet away. Already the lances of purple energy began to creep over her form. If it had been her intention to leave all along, why hadn't she done it earlier when the other three had departed?

And then Vascha drew one of Logan's claws, slid it under a section of the thick wires of the harness that had been exposed in her fight with X-23, and severed them in one quick motion. The battery's energy immediately abandoned her, returning to Ben with a snap like the ends of whips. He felt an odd sensation of being pulled backward by his navel as the machinery fired up, ready to jerk him bodily through time and space back to the Helicarrier.

He looked one more time into Vascha's eyes, the mixture of confusion and outrage and sadness he felt making it impossible to form his thoughts into words. Tears, hard as they were to see on her black cheeks, were running down her face, though her expression remained hard.

"Tell them I said goodbye."

"Vascha!" Ben called, although it seemed his voice was coming from somewhere far away now, "No!"

The CHB harness suddenly tugged hard against his body, and he felt every molecule of his being fold up and slip through a hole in the fabric of reality, a zap of purple energy crackling as the world went dark around him, closing like a tunnel.


	23. A Bone to Pick, and a Few to Break

_**Hello readers,**_

**_Only a few chapters left to go. Excited to see how Book One ends? Well, I'm excited to show you. Since we're running down to the end of the first part of this tale, now's the time when I'd really appreciate any feedback you guys have. Is there anything you're looking forward to? Anything you'd like to see? I know a good deal of you have subscribed to the story and never reviewed. Don't be shy! I want to know if you're enjoying yourselves._**

**_Also, be careful about any conclusions you may be drawing as to certain unresolved threads in the narrative. I can assure you, many things in this universe are not what they seem._**

**_Hori out._**

For all of his experience with mutants and their related abilities, Hunter had never been teleported before. He was more than aware of the legendary talents of Nightcrawler, who had been a friend and comrade to his uncle Evan decades ago, but teleporters these days were few and far between, almost as rare as telepaths, as both groups had fallen swiftly under the fixed attention of the Sentinel fleets when the human/mutant conflict had truly escalated into all out war. He didn't know what to expect.

As it turned out, it did not matter much what he had expected. Aside from the crackle of purple light and the feeling of being pulled inward into himself, the whole experience was over before he could ascertain the full sensation of the dimensional jump. One minute he was standing on The Ark, the next, he was falling unceremoniously backward onto a hard steel and plastic floor, a smell like ozone filling his nose. If there was any noise that accompanied their arrival besides the atmospheric pop of air being swiftly moved aside to make way for their bodies, Hunter's ears did not register it.

If there was one side effect from the CHB jump that he could notice, it was a sudden and intense cold that seemed to originate within his own body, skirting the edge of physical pain. His limbs began to tremble and shake almost instantly after they made their entrance onto the teleporting deck of the Helicarrier, and his jaw began to spasm, making his teeth chatter. Hunter craned his neck, suddenly stiff with discomfort from the unnatural chill, and saw that Gansükh and Rin seemed to be experiencing the same sensation as they clenched their teeth and held their arms to their chests, trying to rub out the freezing bite.

As the cold began to slowly subside, Hunter could finally take in and absorb the composition of the room they had been transported to by the dimensional ripcord that was the CHB harness. It was a domed room, very dimly lit, roughly twenty feet at its highest point, and twice that in diameter, making the structure like a sphere that had been cut in half. They were situated in the middle, atop a pad of semi-opaque polymer that seemed to glow slightly as it hummed with energy and even emitted small puffs of sterile-smelling steam as the machine cooled down. Since the room itself was decorated not at all, Hunter guessed that the real innards of the complex teleportation system were directly beneath them, hidden from view.

"Trans-dimensional shock. It's normal, don't worry. Try to breathe. Where are the others?"

Hunter was suddenly aware of hands on his body, and jerked his head to see a SHIELD operative, a medic, based on her attire, attaching several small devices to the bare flesh of his arm as she used a bulky device that she wore over her palm and fingers to make a sweeping gesture over his body. From nearly indiscernible emitters and scanners in the electronics-filled glove, a hologram of faint green popped into the air and began to display the interior of Hunter's body, making minor notations here and there in the suspended image as automated programs scanned for injuries.

"Negative on the incoming scanner," he heard another voice, "No one else is coming through."

"I'm okay," Hunter wanted to say, but his voice creaked like an old door, and all he could manage was a faint wheezing. His windpipe felt as though it had been covered in frost.

The medic pressed her free hand, which seemed remarkably hot against his chilled skin, against his forehead and gently but firmly press him back down to a prone position, stopping him from rising.

"Please," she said, "I need a full diagnosis. Try to relax and stay calm," then to someone else, "I need an IV here." He felt the pinch of a needle in the ditch of his arm.

Hunter turned his head slightly and noticed that Rin and Gansükh were receiving a similar treatment. In mere seconds, the medical team had discerned not only Rin's rather obvious laceration in the muscle of her calf, but also Gan's dislocated shoulder, the severe bruising around Hunter's neck, and a dozen other more minor scrapes, cuts, and burns that none of them had even had a chance to notice throughout the course of the battle.

_The battle..._

Hunter felt an ache beneath his breastbone that was no product of any wound. It pained him to leave his teammates behind, as much as Vascha's orders for them to abandon the fight made logical sense. It made him feel inadequate and inept. He felt somehow that if his uncle Evan and great aunt Ororo could have seen him, they would have been ashamed. No matter how his brain turned over the situation, no matter how many times he reminded himself that Vascha had been right, one word kept bubbling to the surface of the swirling cauldron in his brain: Coward. He knew it wasn't true, but that did nothing to stem the soreness he felt deep in his stomach.

"Secured," he heard one of the medics say, breaking him from his thoughts, "Containment team move in."

Hunter again tried to rise, and once again felt hands firmly press him back down. It was not as though he lacked the strength to simply push the medic away, but the cold swelling in his body still had not completely dissipated, and suddenly a great weariness swept over him, as though he had not slept in many days. It was not a phenomenon he was unfamiliar with; After hours upon hours of his body operating on maximum capacity, he was bound to crash the moment his subconscious detected a lapse in the constant danger he had been exposed to. Nevertheless, there was something about the tone in the medic's voice that made him very much want to fight the urge to simply lie down and sleep for hours.

_It's okay_, a voice in his head countered, _You can rest now for awhile._

_No,_ he argued with himself, _Vascha sent us here to... To what?_ It had suddenly become almost impossible to think.

Hunter was dimly aware of the strong vibration against his back as booted feet marched across the floor of the domed teleportation room. He felt something cool slide over his neck and come to rest with a soft click. Hunter felt a sudden an inexplicable sinking feeling in his chest, as though the air in his lungs had grown stale and sour.

Without warning, Rin began to scream. Instinctively, despite the deep sludge that had overcome much of his conscious mind, Hunter raised his hands to cover his ears, but something stopped him. Rin's scream did not tear through his skull with its usual brutal frequency, ripping into the physical world like a hurricane. It was not the banshee's wail that he had come to know and respect and even fear from the diminutive Japanese girl. It was a normal scream. A human scream, filled with fear and anger. It was a scream that Hunter had never heard Rin produce with her unnatural, hyper-charged vocal cords.

The cloud of fog that had taken root over Hunter's brain seemed to break slightly, and Hunter reached up, his arms moving painfully slow, and touched his neck.

_An inhibitor collar._ Rin was screaming because her powers were being sapped, and without her powers, she was blind, and Hunter knew how her blindness terrified her.

Hunter looked down at his arm, peering through a thick haze in his vision, at the needle sunk into the vein bulging in the crux of his elbow, felt the warm wash of sedatives still pumping into his system through the tube that had been connected to him, and understanding finally set in. Hunter tried to reach for the hose that was drowning his system in drugs to try and pull it out, but his limbs seemed to be made of rubber, and when he tried to fight against the hands that pushed and pulled him back down to the floor, there was nothing he could do to stop it.

_Man_, he thought dully, _SHIELD hasn't been throwing straight dice since they brought us on this ship._

Hunter was dimly aware of a gun being pointed into his face, of words, some kind of threat, being spoken to him, but the sound of his own heartbeat thumped slowly and steadily in his ears, deafening him to all but the faintest, most unclear of sounds.

"Shit..." he managed before unconsciousness began to sink its teeth into his skull.

"Hold on," he heard a voice say, tones of panic discernible even in his sedated state, "We've got another incoming!"

Then, what seemed like miles away, there was a flash of purple light, a loud pop like a pressurized can opening, and a sudden commotion as confusion seemed to grip the SHIELD operatives that surrounded Hunter as he lay limply on the plastic floor, sleep being drilled into him through the needle in his arm. Feet scrambled and stomped around him, and what might have been gunfire rattled in his ears as the sound caromed off the slick curves of the room. The chaos might have lasted two seconds, or twenty minutes. Hunter could not be sure.

Worlds away, Hunter felt a pinch in the soft flesh of his arm, and the stomach-turning sensation of a needle being slid out of the skin.

Like an avalanche, the teleportation room of the Helicarrier seemed to fall back into place as his body began to purge the invading narcotics almost immediately. He had a sensation in the pit of his stomach as though he had been riding in a passenger plane that suddenly decided to take an abrupt dive, and he sputtered suddenly as he was once again able to consciously take a deep breath, choking slightly on his saliva in the process.

A face suddenly came into focus, hovering above him, dark and shadowed in the dim light of the room, but instantly recognizable.

"Ben..."

Hunter felt clumsy fingers on the inhibitor collar at his throat as the Israeli mutant fumbled at the device, finally clicking the latch open, allowing it to fall to the floor with a clatter.

The world was coming back to him now, and Hunter hauled himself up to a sitting position. Gansükj and Rin had also been freed, and both had already made it groggily to their feet, their mutant metabolisms fighting to sedatives as quickly as his did. Rin in particular looked visibly shaken by her brief encounter with the power-draining collars. Around them lay the unconscious bodies of three medics and two SHIELD soldiers. Blood pooled around some of their faces where they had been dealt severe blows to their heads.

It took Hunter so long to finally spot where Ben had gone that he halfway believed he had imagined his teammate, but soon enough his eyes found him. He was crouched against the floor several paces away, cradling his wounded abdomen with his one uninjured arm, while the other still hung at his side. Ben was still obviously feeling the chilling effect of the teleportation process in addition to his injuries, and his body trembled uncontrollably.

"Backstabbing bastards," he heard Ben whisper.

Hunter felt a sudden and unusual pang of guilt for trying to dissuade Vascha from bringing Ben along to try and rescue Ciara. Injuries and an inability to use his powers in the Helicarrier notwithstanding, Ben had been given the same rigorous training as any of them, and he was still every bit the capable fighter Logan had made him into. His quick dispatch of the SHIELD agents was a testament to that.

But why was Ben here in the first place?

"I thought SHIELD might try something when we returned," Gansükh muttered, rubbing his neck, "Just not something like this." He raised his own inhibitor collar in one hand, then threw it to the floor and stomped it with his heavy combat boot.

"Thank you, Ben," Rin said quietly, then, turning her head side to side quickly, added, "Where did Vascha go?"

"She stayed," Ben's voice was barely above a whisper.

Hunter, and Gansükh exchanged glances.

"What do you mean," Hunter asked, approaching Ben's crouching form, "Where is she?"

"She wouldn't let me go with her. She's on The Ark," Ben turned his face towards them, still slightly dull and pale from blood loss and exertion, "She's going after him."

For a moment, none of them knew what to say. For Vascha to proceed on a mission alone when a teammate was available and willing to accompany her was such a tremendous breach of the mission protocol that Logan had instilled in their tactical minds that, for a moment, they were silent with incomprehension at her decision. Even in rare cases where an aspect of an operation had to be carried out solo, there were backups and alternative plans and teammates waiting to swoop in should the need arise. Vascha had made the decision to dive head first into the belly of the beast with no support whatsoever, not even from SHIELD. Why?

Slowly they all understood, and the realization made Hunter's skin ripple with anxiety.

"She doesn't think she's coming back," Rin said quietly, "She believes there is no hope of rescue."

Ben nodded, the grimace engraved into his features so pained that Hunter thought his teammate might shed tears.

Somewhere nearby, an alarm sounded. Hunter could see no security cameras within the domed teleportation room, but nevertheless, a SHIELD operative had probably finally figured out why the medical team was taking so long. They would only have a few minutes before more agents streamed through the small, armored doorway that was the only exit.

Hunter felt his face contort into a scowl, and he balled up his powerful fists as he marched toward the prone form of one of the unconscious medics and began fishing through her medical equipment. He produced several bandages and a single-use syringe and walked over to Ben, crouching beside him. Without asking permission, Hunter grabbed his injured arm and began applying the high-tech bandages to the wound.

"She's wrong," Hunter snarled, binding the material to the separated flesh of Ben's arm muscle, then inserting the needle into the surrounding tissue and pushing down on the plunger. It was a stim-pack designed for soldiers, a potent mix of painkillers and synthetic adrenaline that would draw the Israeli out of his numbed state. Sure enough, as though he'd been slapped in the face, Ben's eyes widened as he sucked in air, his whole nervous system suddenly supercharged with energy.

Hunter grasped Ben by the shoulder and held him firm, meeting the other boy's gaze.

"We're going to get to the bridge, we're going to get some answers, and we'll get them back," he said, "Both of them."

His words were reassuring, but Hunter's mind was racing faster than he could keep up. How could Vascha be so foolish? So willing to sacrifice herself? What could possibly be going through her head that she would send Ben back without her?

Ben, newly invigorated by the drugs Hunter had injected into his system, wiped the sheen of sweat from his brow and stood, searching around his immediate area, then spotting an unconscious SHIELD agent's repulsor rifle. He walked over and collected the weapon, checking the energy pack situated beneath the barrel for any damage, then turned to Hunter and nodded.

"Rin," Gansükh said to the Japanese girl, checking his own small collection of armaments that he still carried before pressing both fingers to his ears, "Open that door." After a beat, he added, "Try to keep this non-lethal if possible. We still need someone on this rig to tell us what's really going on."

The three boys covered their ears.

Rin nodded, inhaled, and let her scream, her true scream, tear through the armor of the room's exit with a fury that could only be described as biblical.

* * *

><p>"I'll kill that little bitch! I'll gut her! I'll chew her fucking eyes out!"<p>

Sinister sighed and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

"Laura, my dear," he said wearily, "You have one arm."

Laura Kinney's face contorted into an even deeper scowl on the holographic vid screen. Around her, two genome troopers fussed about her injury as they attempted to stabilize the bandages that held her recently-severed arm secure to the stump at her shoulder. Blood had soaked the gurney she occupied, but that was not due to the grievous wound Laura had been dealt; Her healing factor had made certain to stem the blood flow almost immediately. Rather, Laura had used her remaining arm to gut and then decapitate the first trooper that had dared to touch her in a fit of blind fury.

The genome troopers were not designed to be sophisticated medics by any stretch, but they could be instructed to assist in the tasks that The Ark's automated medical machines cold not complete without human assistance. In this case, keeping Laura from thrashing in her rage as her severed limb was reattached to her body. Sinister knew that even a serious injury such as this would only keep Laura out of a conflict for an hour or so, maybe less, while her healing factor reintegrated the disconnected flesh, bone, and nerves, but her rehabilitation would take even longer if she could not find it in herself to simply calm down. Her anger was one of her most glaring flaws, of which she had very few, and at this moment it was becoming more of a liability than she was worth.

"I don't care if I have no arms _and_ no legs," Laura spat over the vid link, "I'm going to kill that little cunt!"

Sinister sighed, closed the connection without another word, and thumbed one of the nearly two-dozen consoles that surrounded him in the captain's seat in the bridge of The Ark, locking down the medical wing. It certainly would not prevent Laura from escaping the intensive care unit if she really wanted to, but perhaps it would send a clear enough message that he was in no mood to debate with her on the matter. He had no more patience for her bestial and infernal nature, and he certainly would not have her storming around the command deck of his ship in her state. It was no one's fault but her own that she had been bested by the Russian mutant that went by the codename Black. Judging by Laura's account and what he'd seen on the surveillance vids, it was a miracle that the girl had not killed her outright.

The whole scenario had Sinister more on edge than he would have liked to admit. He had placed such faith in his genome troopers and Laura and his Nasty Boys, only to have them cut down in droves by a small strike team of teenage mercenaries parading around the mutant Logan's death like some macabre battle standard. The notion was so ridiculous that Sinister found that he was actually stunned by the development of the conflict. His troopers were perfect clones of the Wolverine in almost every aspect, and yet they had been little more than nuances to the so-called Sons of Logan. Had he miscalculated?

Sinister sighed. Perhaps he had. But that was all part of the concept of evolution. He had not counted on SHIELD, as emasculated as the organization had been after the fall of the United States, to resort to hiring mutants, especially not zealots like Logan's disciples, to try and take back The Ark and secure their secrets within. He had misjudged his enemies, and he had paid for it. Though the price, relative to the reward he had still managed to reap, was infinitesimal. He would learn, he wold evolve, and his new world would be stronger for it.

"Computer," he spoke in a slightly elevated tone so that the ship's voice recognition software would respond to his address, "Sweep corridors 34b through 45g again."

The ship's software pause a moment before displaying the same infuriating results: _No unauthorized personnel detected._

Sinister felt his fist ball up tightly, emitting small pops as the joints cracked. Once again, he tried to use his telepathic abilities, in their infancy as they were, to scan his surrounding area for signs of Vascha Aleksandrov. His powers were still unwieldy, and there were moments in which he felt like a child trying to heft a large rifle for all the control he had over them. For brief instances he was confident he did feel something, some outside and unfamiliar presence at the edge of his mind's reach, but it would disappear just as quickly, like a faint itch that seemed to have no discernible source. At the outset of the battle, he had been able to peel some small bits of information from some of Logan's disciples, like catching small bursts of radio transmissions, such as their names or other randomly generated pieces of intel, but that had stopped almost immediately when he had revealed his powers to them and they began putting effort into shielding their minds. Perhaps that had been a mistake as well. Wherever she was, now that Ms. Aleksandrov was aware of Sinister's telepathy, she was doing an impressive job of masking her psyche. No doubt another infernal skill Logan had taught his assassins.

In any case, it was rather disappointing that the Russian girl had been the only one that had stayed behind while the others fled back to SHIELD's flying fortress. He would have liked to add all of them to his 'collection.' They were simply that impressive.

Again, he manually scanned the motion detectors and vid cameras that covered every conceivable corner of the tower that housed the bridge, and again was frustrated. The relatively limited number of cameras in the parkway had managed to capture her for a brief period of time as she alone proceeded towards the tower, but like a ghost, like a thin wisp of smoke, she had suddenly vanished, and had not been seen again for several minutes.

She was coming, of that there could be no doubt, and when she arrived, he would capture her or crush her like an insect, but the lack of data as to her whereabouts was setting him on edge, much as he would not like to admit it.

"I hope she castrates you before she kills you."

Sinister frowned and looked down from the massive, elevated platform that allowed him to oversee the entirety of The Ark's command deck, which in and of itself was the size of a large house. By the short staircase leading to his post sat Ciara Monetti, staring up at him, still aggravatingly defiant despite being utterly subdued and unquestionably beaten. Since she had regained her composure and lost the manic, animal rage that had made her mind so easy to access despite the mental blocks that some telepath-for-hire had placed there, he found it more and more difficult to maintain a foothold in her consciousness as her mental barriers reasserted themselves. At first, that had not concerned him; The ruse of projecting her fallen master's image into her mind had lasted long enough for her to be overtaken and incapacitated. But now he would give any number of things to be able to reach into her brain and switch off the part that allowed her to speak.

Still, his earlier access to her psyche did afford him some familiarity with her conscious mind's inner workings, and while he could no longer read her thoughts with ease or control what she heard or saw, he could hurt her. It was crude and clumsy, but all he had to do was direct the idea of unimaginable pain towards her, and it would have the desired effect.

He did so.

Ciara's head snapped back as though she'd been struck, new blood spraying from her nose as her nervous system reeled from the shock of his psychic attack. A sound between a growl and a scream rattled out of her throat as she fell on her side, her face slapping loudly on the floor, unable as she was to brace her fall with her bound hands.

Sinister was careful not to damage her permanently, or as careful as he knew how to be. The girl's nearly indomitable fighting spirit was of a caliber that he had rarely seen. She would be useful, even if she did require a little... training.

Ciara righted herself in one rough movement, glared into Sinister's face with one functioning eye, and spat blood on the floor.

"Fuck you."

Well... Perhaps more than a little.

Sinister sighed once again and turned back to face the massive, clear opening that made up an entire angled wall of the bridge, allowing him a panoramic view of the New Mexico desert that surrounded The Ark and it's outlying facility. Though it appeared to be glass, it was actually a much safer and more durable transparent kinetic barrier, which could display a nearly infinite amount of information upon it, as well as become polarized or blacked out entirely at his whim. In the distance, the faintest glow of light could be seen against the dark blue horizon, like a halo placed upon the landscape. Nearly dawn.

While the bridge of the massive ship had been designed to accommodate more than two hundred engineers, technicians, helmsmen, and other related SHIELD officers, The Ark was more than capable of running on skeleton crew of only a few dozen. Sinister had made a point of that. Several genome troopers sat at consoles nearby, operating and testing and activating the necessary equipment and software for the ship's launch. They did the work mechanically, devoid of any interest or enthusiasm, as was their usual attitude.

"Begin ignition sequence," Sinister purred, the words feeling extraordinary as they passed over his tongue. He had been waiting a very long time to say that. The Russian mutant be damned, she could waste as much time as she liked skulking through his ship before she was discovered. He would launch his new empire on schedule.

Immediately, the troopers set to work, redoubling in their speed as they began the series of checks required to fire up The Ark's massive engines.

It was quiet at first, more of a sensation than a sound, then slowly the rumbling that came deep from the heart of the airship began to translate into actual noise as the reactors began to fire and churn and generate the power that would open The Ark to Sinister like an oyster. Life seemed to bubble out of every curve, every deck, every last bolt and rivet as the engines began to thunder far below in the underbelly of the ship. He could feel the rhythmic pulse of the ship's energy beneath his fingertips.

The Ark had been fully activated.

"Computer," Sinister intoned, "Diagnostic."

The holographic interfaces, many of which had been kept in a sleep mode while the engines had remained dormant, roared to life in every color imaginable as volumes of information began spilling out into the air in front of him. The status of every engine, every deck, the minutia of every system and sub-system and backup and safety scrolled by, the weapons systems flashed a vivid green as every heavy gun and turret and missile checked its initialization test. Everything, every last detail was accounted for, and not a single error message nor bug nor glitch could be found.

Sinister could not help himself. He clasped his hands together and chuckled.

He turned and looked down to the genome trooper that manned the helm of the ship to his immediate right. On a ship this large, the helm was less a series of direct controls over the pitch, roll, yaw, and altitude of the vessel, and more of a daunting collection of computers and holographic interfaces that allowed for the hundreds upon thousands of calculations necessary to direct The Ark to be executed quickly and accurately. One needed only to place hands over holographic representations of the ship and drag it this way or that, and the ship would begin the laborious process of altering its course. It was remarkably slow, but the idea behind The Ark had never been speed or maneuverability.

"Take us to initial launch altitude," Sinister said, giving the trooper at the helm little more than a cursory glance.

After a moment, Sinister looked again, this time with agitation, as the genome trooper simply sat in his seat, arms hanging at his side as though he'd been suddenly and completely struck dumb.

"Did you not hear me?" Sinister snapped, preparing to stimulate the trooper with a psychic jolt, "I said-"

He stopped short when the clone soldier's helmeted head fell from his shoulders, hitting the ground with a resonating bang, causing the remaining troopers manning the bridge to turn and look at the source of the disruption. The cut that had severed the clone's neck was so clean and precise that the wound did not begin to bleed for several seconds after the head had fallen away.

Sinister's face contorted into a scowl, a mix of shock and anger and frustration coursing through the pit of his stomach.

The remaining troopers stood and started to move towards their fallen brother, drawing small sidearms or stun canes from their belts, as Sinister would never have allowed for their powerful electromagnetic rifles to be used on the bridge of his ship. Without speaking, Sinister made a gesture to halt them, and bade them return to their seats. He could not afford for each of them to abandon their stations. Still silent, he began to turn this way and that, his ears tuned to pick up even the smallest noise that did not belong, his muscles tensing, ready for an attack.

How the devil had she gotten into the command deck without his noticing? True, the bridge was so large that it required nearly a dozen separate entrances, and keeping his eyes on all of them was a physical impossibility, but his computer systems would have warned him if the Russian mutant had been detected anywhere near them.

There was a loud clattering, and Sinister turned just in time to see the head of another genome trooper, this one a slight distance from the remaining half dozen, roll across the floor as his body folded in, collapsing in a heap into his chair. Once again, the other clone soldiers jumped to attention, assuming fighting positions and scanning the surrounding area for foes.

Sinister muttered a curse and redoubled his efforts, visually scanning the massive room for the mutant girl. He had gleaned a fair understanding of Vascha Aleksandrov's mutant powers from the time he'd spent in Ciara's mind; She had a preternatural ability for stealth, her body's absorption of ambient light making for an effective camouflage in most situations and allowing her to slip through most people's field of vision without them knowing, but if one could gain and maintain a visual fix on her, then her talent for disappearing waned considerably. That still did not fully explain how she had managed to bypass his security.

He would just have to beat the answer out of her.

Slowly, making sure not to turn his gaze away from the expanse of the bridge, lest he miss the mutant girl's next move, Sinister reached out to one of his consoles and grazed several switches with his fingers, activating a series of scanners on the deck.

"Computer," he said quietly, "Locate unauthorized person on the bridge."

There was a pause of only about two seconds before the console made a pinging noise and said: "No unauthorized personnel detected."

Sinister looked down at his collection of screens and interfaces in disbelief, then, realizing his error, whipped his gaze back down to the deck of the bridge. He breathed a small sigh of relief when he saw that no more troopers had been dispatched during his brief lapse in concentration.

_Where is she?_

"Hey," a voice called out behind him. Surprised, Sinister began to turn. In the confusion, he had all but forgotten about Ciara Monetti.

It had been so long since anyone had physically struck him that, for a moment, he had no idea what had happened. Before he could fully about-face, before even his lightning-fast reflexes could form a defense, Ciara's fist collided with the side of his head where his jaw met his skull, and Sinister felt the bones crack and cave in on themselves. He was vaguely aware of tumbling backward over the railing of the platform he occupied, falling the short distance to the floor and landing awkwardly on his head and neck. If Ciara had delivered that same blow to a normal man, she probably would have taken his head completely off of his shoulders.

Before he could recover, Ciara leapt down and landed on his chest with both knees, driving the oxygen out of his lungs and breaking his sternum with a snap. She maneuvered quickly, faster than Sinister could react, pressing both of her legs down over his arms and looping the length of vibranium wire that his soldiers had used to secure her feet and hands around his neck. She pulled it taut with what was probably all of her strength, and Sinister's vision instantly exploded with stars as his brain was instantly starved of oxygen. He felt a popping sensation as his larynx was crushed.

Sinister wondered for a moment why the six genome troopers had done nothing through this whole exchange, but as he turned his gaze away from Ciara's mangled, snarling face, it become more than obvious. Four of the troopers were engaged in a conflict with an assailant, and the other two had already fallen, missing half and all of their heads, respectively. Sinister looked at their opponent, but for a time what he saw did not make any sense. Then it dawned on him.

Though her ability to absorb light also sapped the color out of any object that had prolonged contact with her skin, Sinister could easily understand now how Vascha had bypassed many of his security measures. It did not fit her well, and she looked slightly awkward in it, but the armor of one of his genome troopers she wore was unmistakable. She had guessed correctly that the troopers wore devices within the electronics of their suits that constantly identified them to the ship's computer. Wearing the armor combined with her ability to slip into shadows and bend light around her, and she'd probably had no trouble at all making her way to the bridge. The Russian mutant moved like black liquid, ducking under a trooper's arm as he swung at her with a stun cane, kicking out a leg to knock him to the floor, and piercing him through the eye with one of the claws she carried.

As she made another blindingly quick series of strikes, dispatching another trooper with her deadly adamnatium blades in mere moments, and already turning to face the remaining two, Sinister could not help but admire Vascha's speed, grace, quick thinking. Logan had crafted an impressive and unique set of warriors, of that there was no doubt. Certainly the loss of more genome troopers was an irritation, but nothing that could not be amended later when more of the clones were decanted from their breeding tubes.

In another situation he might have smiled, but right now there were more pressing matters to attend to. He turned his red eyes back to Ciara and felt his lips curl into a grin. He almost felt pity for the girl. These mutants, these children, still had no comprehension of what he was. The broken bones of his face and head and chest, the wire around his neck that deprived him of oxygen and decimated the soft tissue of his throat, these would have been a life-threatening concern for nearly any other man. For him, they were annoyances.

Soon enough though, they would learn.

* * *

><p>In wide-open spaces, the shrill, piercing noise of an alarm could throw Rin's senses for a loop, making it increasingly difficult to focus her ability to make sound waves into an avatar of the world around her. In a closed area, like the corridors of the Helicarrier, the effect was quite the opposite; The constant wave of noise bouncing off every surface as the ship's sirens wailed made her picture of the environment even more vivid and precise than usual. It was what allowed her to be aware of the SHIELD agent that crouched behind a corner they were coming up on. Rin turned swiftly around the bend and, before the startled man could react, swung her long katana in an upward arc, catching him in the unarmored jaw. She was careful to hit him with the flat of the blade, so rather than take his face completely off, the force of the metal striking him caused the agent to snap his head backwards, banging loudly against the corridor wall, and knocking him out cold.<p>

She did not have time to stop and admire her own handiwork, and barely broke stride as she continued down the Helicarrier's corridor leading to the bridge at a quick jog. Hunter, Gansukh, and Ben followed closely behind. They had thus far encountered only a moderate amount of resistance, but that could be expected. From what she had sensed on the ship earlier, the vast majority of SHIELD's force aboard the airship was comprised mostly of officers and engineers and other personnel that would be useless in a fight. A small number were a dedicated security force, and even some hardened soldiers, but on such a large vessel they had not had the proper time to organize a concentrated effort against Rin and her teammates as they made swift progress through the belly of the ship. More than likely they were now fortifying their position on the bridge. That thought concerned her. While the Helicarrier's interior was not nearly the tactical death wish that The Ark was, forcing their way onto the bridge was going to be difficult. They needed some kind of leverage. They needed...

Rin's attention turned back to the task at hand as she sensed yet another SHIELD operative crouching against a small gap in the wall created by an access ladder that led to a maintenance deck. Didn't these people know any other tactic? Rin readied her katana, ready to dispatch this one the same as she had the last man that had tried to get the jump on her and her teammates. She pivoted as she reached the gap in the wall, bringing the sword up in the same stroke as before.

"Stop!"

Rin stopped, her sword blade just inches below the man's jaw. Not because the command, or rather the plea, had any bearing on her actions, but because the voice had been familiar. Sensing the man was not carrying any weapon, Rin lowered her sword.

The three boys, seeing her halt in her tracks, stopped as well, looking at the man that pressed against the wall of the corridor, hands outstretched to display their lack of any firearms.

"Agent Travis," Gansükh said, devoid of any discernible emotion.

Apparently sensing that he was not in immediate danger from them, Travis smoothed back his slightly tousled hair and glared at each of them. There was a thin sheen of sweat over the brow of his young face.

"Are you insane?" he hissed, "You couldn't take down Sinister, so you're going to storm the Helicarrier?"

"Going to?" Hunter repeated, looking to his right and left down the empty corridor, "I'd say that we are."

"We couldn't take down Sinister," Gansükh snarled, taking a step towards the agent, "Because your plan all along was to skewer us on a hook like bait."

"What are you talking about?" Travis asked, and air of indignation to his voice.

Ben took one step forward, wound up with his uninjured arm, and backhanded Travis across the jaw. It was not a powerful strike, but it seemed to catch the young SHIELD agent completely off guard, whipping his head to the side dramatically.

Rin, Gansükh, and Hunter were all equally stunned. Ben was not one to even speak when it was not required of him, and going out of his way to slap someone around was completely out of his character.

Ben slammed his fist into the wall of the corridor directly beside Travis' head. "We left two of our team back there, asshole. Vascha stayed behind to rescue Ciara, and without their CHB battery, they're stranded if we can't figure out a way to get them back." Ben leaned in until his face was only centimeters from Travis', "We failed because you decided to leave us in the dark on critical intel. Namely, the genome troopers. And I'm willing to bet you were more than aware of X-23 being in Sinister's fold, and Sinister's apparent ability to gain new powers whenever he damn well feels like it. He's a goddamn telepath now! When we're you planning on letting us in on that?"

Seemingly exhausted from the exertion, Ben stepped back several paces, breathing heavily, though his eyes still blazed with intensity.

"We're on the verge of losing Vascha, Ciara, and your ship unless you and your superiors start leveling with us," Gansükh jabbed a finger into the agent's chest, "Right now."

For several seconds, Travis seemed too stunned to speak, then wiped the small dab of blood from his lip that had been left by Ben's blow. He looked at them with apprehension, maybe even worry in his visage.

"Ciara was captured?" he asked, looking at each of them in turn, "And you're saying Sinister has gained telepathic abilities?"

They nodded.

"Then it's safe to assume that..." Travis swallowed.

"Yes," Rin supplied, "He knows that SHIELD was behind the attack. He drew the information out of her."

"Jesus..." Travis rubbed his forehead with his hand, then suddenly stiffened, "Oh Jesus Christ, he's going to fire his nukes!"

"Well," Hunter crossed his arms, "That means you have a little more incentive to help us now, doesn't it?"

"Please," Rin said, her soft, quiet voice a contrast to her teammates, "Help us finish this. We can still prevail if we move quickly."

Travis seemed suddenly lost in his own thoughts, and abruptly began walking down the corridor, speaking tersely into the communicator he wore in his ear.

"Fire team stand down! Code Orange! I repeat, fire team stand down! The Sons of Logan have not defected! The Sons of Logan are still friendlies! I repeat, still friendlies! I am escorting them to the bridge right now." There was a pause, and then, "I don't care what General Cole says, if we don't move now, Sinister is going to launch The Ark's nukes. He may already have begun the countdown!"

Travis stopped, turned, and looked at them.

"Are you coming or not?" he snapped.

They each exchanged glances, and paused for only a moment before following Travis down the corridor toward the bridge. After a moment, the resounding cry of the ship's alarms ceased.

"You thought we had gone over to Sinister's side?" Rin asked.

"I wasn't sure what was going on," Travis said, "But when Vascha started asking about The Ark, then suddenly cut communications with us, General Cole was convinced that something had happened to make your team turn against us. He decided to have you restrained when you returned and subjected to questioning, so we could at least gather some new intel and figure out where we stood with Sinister."

Rin wanted to say something about how misguided that sounded, but decided to let it go for the time being.

"It wasn't The Ark Vascha asked questions about that put Cole in a knot," Hunter said, "It was Terminus and Ominous. What can you tell us?"

"Nothing," Travis replied, then, feeling each of them staring a hole into the back of his head, turned to look at them and added, "I mean it! You know as much as I do. I haven't got any idea why SHIELD would be hiding anything from you about that."

"What about the Genome Troopers?" Ben asked.

Travis bit his lip, "We thought, if you knew about their... origin, it might affect your combat effectiveness when facing them. We didn't even anticipate you'd have to fight many at all. We figured you'd succeed in taking care of Sinister from a distance, like we had planned." He gave a sidelong glance to Gansükh, "Did you miss?"

The Mongolian sniper grunted in irritation. "I took half of his fucking head off. I don't think it even slowed him down much."

Travis digested this. "So he's improved his regeneration ability. Or we misjudged it entirely."

"There's an understatement," Ben mused, with no humor in his voice.

Travis passed a hand over the console that locked the first set of blast doors that protected access to the Helicarrier's bridge. Another hallway spread out in front of them, and they continued at the same brisk clip. The agent seemed to be thinking something over, having some kind of debate inside of his head. Finally, he seemed to come to a conclusion, and looked back over one shoulder to speak to them.

"You won't find this in any SHIELD report," he said, "Because we've never been able to confirm it, but some of us who have been researching Sinister for awhile believe that he's been working for decades on ways to distill genetic mutation into predictable formulas, allowing him to conceivably shape a living mutant along the paths he desires. There's evidence linking him to nearly a dozen bizarre mutant deaths that seemed to stem from rapid and disastrous new mutations. If you trace the origins of the Canadian Weapon X program, you'll find some compelling data that suggests it was his original research into the concept that made it possible. We've always entertained the idea that he was shipping mutants that had been placed in stasis into The Ark with the express purpose of furthering his research."

They reached the second set of blast doors, this one requiring not only Travis' palm print, but also his ocular scan. Travis continued to speak even as a device pointed a blue light into his eye and emitted a high-pitched series of beeps.

"If I had to guess, I'd say he's finally gained enough confidence in his work that he's comfortable using it on himself."

"So let's say, for example," Gansükh probed, "He wants to be a telepath. He just finds a mutant who has telepathic powers, copies whatever it is about their genes that gave them those abilities, and somehow puts it into his own?"

It was a sobering thought. If there was no limit to what Sinister could manufacture his body to do, it might not be long before he was truly and completely unkillable.

Travis shrugged, "It's a theory. I can tell you for sure that none of our intel has ever, in over a hundred years, ever suggested that he had telepathic powers until now. It would also help explain his ability to survive a gunshot to the head. If he's tracked down enough mutants with healing abilities and mapped out their genetic secrets, a bullet to the brain might not cut it any more."

"So how do we kill him?" Hunter asked.

Seemingly frustrated, Travis begrudgingly shrugged his shoulders, "Hell if I know. The only other healer that I know of with abilities as advanced as you're describing is Wolverine, and Sinister killed him, so it's not as though we could ask either of them how it was done."

As they reached the last doorway that would lead them into the bridge, Travis' eyes seemed to light up for a moment.

"Hey," he said, "There is one person who might know how to kill a guy like Sinister."

"Who?" Gansükh asked.

"Professor Charles Xavier."

Before any of them could question Travis' bizarre chain of logic, or ask exactly how a dead man was supposed to help them beat Sinister, the last set of doors hissed open, and they were greeted by the harsh, scowling, leathery face of General Cole.

"Someone explain to me what the hell is going on, or I start throwing mutants out of the airlock."

* * *

><p>Ciara growled in frustration as Sinister's white face grinned crookedly at her. She redoubled her efforts, pulling on either end of the vibranium wire with all of her strength. Her body protested the exertion in the form of an orchestra of pain that bit into her from her head to her feet, injured muscles and joints and bones creaking and tearing from the added stress she placed on them. With her unnatural strength, even in her ragged state, she should have been able to take Sinister's head off his body with all the torque she was placing on the thin, durable wire. Nevertheless, besides the continued popping noises as she further pulverized the cartilage in his windpipe, he remained frustratingly capitated.<p>

_That's fine_, she thought to herself, _I can just hold him like this until his asphyxiates. Even he has to breathe. I just have to hold him until Vascha can take care of those last two troopers._

As the seconds crawled by, however, she was not so sure. He simply stared at her with those blood-colored eyes of his, seemingly amused by her efforts to end his life.

_Die_!, she shouted in her head, repeating it like a prayer, _Please just die! Die!_

_Not today, Ciara._

His voice rattled in her head like a nightmare, and she did her best to keep it from shaking her resolution. She had to try and stay calm, above all else. Whatever his telepathic abilities might be, his ease of entering her mind seemed to be directly related to how far she let her anger go and her mental defenses drop. It was difficult, to say the least. The illusion Sinister had used to lull her into dropping her guard, that of her fallen master, left her mind feeling dirty and violated, as though he'd left a deep, infected wound into the most private and delicate places in her psyche. She wanted to let go, she wanted to be angry. She could feel the feral part of her self rattling against the mental cage she kept it in. It wanted blood.

A sensation like a bomb going off in her skull rocked Ciara physically back as Sinister delivered another one of his powerful telepathic lances into her mind. It was as though every wound she'd ever received came back all at once, and she felt a scream pass her lips. Miraculously, her grip on the wire around Sinister's neck remained firm, and she continued to pull as hard as her battered form would allow.

Another psychic assault, like someone had opened her head and poured broken glass and rock salt into her exposed brain, caused her vision to explode with bright lights. She felt something warm in her ears, and could only guess that her eardrums had burst from the mental impact. The sounds of Vascha fighting were overshadowed by a deep, long buzzing. Ciara shook her head, gripped the wire even tighter still, and continued to pull. Before Sinister could again attack her with his telepathic powers, she cocked her head back and smashed her forehead into his nose once, twice, three times, leaving his face a mash of purple blood and broken bones.

Sinister opened his ruined mouth and chuckled, bits of blood flying from the ugly hole at had been lips and teeth and tongue moments ago.

"You have such conviction," she thought he might have said. It was hard to tell with his maw filling with his dark gore, "And you have no idea why you're even here."

Ciara leaned in, her face felt heavy with the swelling of her battered cheeks and nose and jaw, stared into his eyes with her one, and whispered in a hoarse snarl: "I know exactly why I'm here."

It was more true than Sinister might have realized. When she had been attacked after following the apparition of Logan that had been projected into her mind, when her mental barriers began to function again, forcing Sinister to vacate her consciousness, she had caught a glimpse, just a small sampling, of his twisted and convoluted mind. She had not seen the entirety of his designs for the rest of the world and beyond, but she had seen enough, had enough blanks filled in, that she now knew that, vengeance aside, Sinister could not be allowed to live. Before, failing to kill him had simply meant failing herself and the memory of Logan. Now, not killing him would mean failing the world. Not just humans, but the planet itself.

"Do you?"

Sinister's third wave of telepathic attacks was unlike anything Ciara had ever experienced. She felt him enter her mind like a knife being pushed slowly, agonizingly through her forehead. The world went dark as pain, white hot and utterly annihilating in its intensity, began to pulse through her like a poison. She felt her heart begin to pump erratically, her nervous system thrown into a full-blown meltdown as scorching, psychic agony ripped her apart from the inside out. If given the choice, Ciara would have gladly undergone any torture that had even been invented by the hands of men than endure one more moment of what Sinister was doing to her. Every physical wound, every heartache, every sadness, every last moment of pain or anger or sorrow came gushing out of her, consuming her. Happiness turned to ash, hope and optimism were ground down like flesh under a belt sander. It was as though the world was ending, and nothing but her own private hell existed anymore.

Ciara was aware of someone screaming far away, and suddenly knew that it was her.

* * *

><p>Vascha used her adamantium blades like a pair of scissors, placing both beneath the neck of a genome trooper before jerking her arms together, slicing through the clone's flesh and armor, letting his severed head fall to the ground. She turned, and before the last standing trooper could get any closer, she drew her pistol, the only one of the two she carried that still had any ammunition, and unloaded the last of its armor-piercing rounds into the solider's face.<p>

She had a only a moment of rest before she heard Ciara screaming. Instantly, she turned on her heel, dropping the pistol and replacing it with the second adamantium blade. Ciara and Sinister were situated much the way they had been before, with Ciara occupying the white-skinned psychopath by pinning him bodily to the floor. She still sat atop him, her knees pressed into his underarms, pinning his arms to the deck, and she still held tightly to the wire she had managed to slip out of and strangle him with. But now, something was very wrong. Ciara's posture was limp, her grip on the vibranium wire feeble, as she seemed to be having some kind of seizure as she sat on Sinister's chest. Her one good eye rolled back into its socket until nothing but white could be seen, and thick ropes of white spittle oozed out of her slackened jaw. Long, sustained cries of agony escaped her throat, sending chills down Vascha's spine.

Vascha looked at Sinister' his face, battered as it was, still fixed on Ciara's his visage, a mask of concentration and determination as the wire around his neck loosened in Ciara's grasp.

Vascha did not have much experience with telepaths and psychics, but she knew an attack when she saw one. Sinister was torturing Ciara from the inside. He was trying to kill her, or at the very least, render her mentally disfigured.

She sprang into a flat run, the considerable weight of the genome trooper's armor she had commandeered slowing her down only slightly. She dove over computer consoles, slid past gigantic holographic interfaces, and covered the last twenty feet in almost one single bound as her entire world became a blur.

"No!" she heard herself scream without ever even thinking about it.

She had launched herself at Sinister with such tremendous speed that, even after Logan's claw slashed through his neck as she sailed by him in the air, she continued on for another dozen feet, tumbling and sliding and crashing into a console upon her landing, having paid no attention at all to what she might collide with at the end of her desperate leap.

She hopped up to her feet, barely registering the new bumps and bruises her fall had given her, and turned back to where Sinister lay.

In that very moment, two things happened. Ciara stopped screaming, stopped convulsing, her muscles finally releasing their visible tension as she seemed to shrink under the release from her agony. She slumped forward, and for a moment, Vascha thought she might stand up, but her head lolled back on her shoulders, and Ciara collapsed soundlessly in a heap, her breath coming in quick, irregular gasps. As she did, Sinister's head, separated neatly from his neck with the adamantium claw, rolled backward off of his body, an expression of shock still frozen there as his newly headless body twitched slightly.

Vascha did not celebrate. She did not even feel the slightest bit of elation as Sinister's severed head still rocked gently back and forth on the floor. She had personally watched the man stand up after losing a whole section of his skull and brain. She did not dare believe that losing his head would kill him completely.

In any case, he was no longer her prime concern, and he seemed at the very least incapacitated for now. Vascha stood, tearing off the thick, clumsy armor she had used to gain access to the bridge, and scrambled to Ciara's side. She picked the tall Italian girl up off the floor and pulled her head and upper body onto her own lap, so that she could look into her face. She felt her throat tighten.

The quick glimpse Vascha had gotten of Ciara wounds had not done them nearly enough justice. She was barely recognizable through the cuts and bruises and blood both old and crusted and fresh and red. One whole side of her head had been scorched black, the hair that had grown there now only a smattering of singed ends. Her body was a riot of similar affectations; Cuts and contusions and punctures and burns seemed to cover every piece of exposed flesh. Her right eye was... Vascha could not be sure. It might have been missing, or it might be hidden somewhere in the mass of red gore and purple, burned flesh that covered the area where her eye had once been.

"Ciara?" Vascha said quietly, her voice wavering more than she could control. Her whole body seemed to be humming with tension as she watched for anything, any sign that Ciara would be alright. She felt hot tears come unbidden, swelling over her eyes and dripping down her cheeks.

Ciara made no movement, made no sound, other than her chest falling up and down erratically as she gasped for air like a fish left on a dock.

"Ciara, it's me," she tried again, using one hand to wipe the blood away from the girl's face, using her other to cradle Ciara's head on her thighs, "It's _kukla_."

Vascha felt the sour taste of spent adrenaline in her mouth and breathed in hard to stop herself from sobbing. Again, she had been too late. Again, she had been too slow. And again, a person she trusted, who had placed their trust in her, had been injured on the field of battle.

"If I had known it was going to end like this," Vascha smiled bitterly, "I would have gotten at least one good kiss out of you."

Despite her age, Vascha was as far from being a child as anyone could be, and did not let things like emotion or hurt feelings or unreturned affection run her life. She remembered years ago, what seemed like an eternity now, when she had first told Ciara Monetti that she had a crush on her. She had been barely more than a girl then, flat-chested and quiet and awkward, and unsure of how to express herself. It was not the drama that books and movies made it out to be, there were no tantrums or thrown objects or fits of tears. Ciara had let her down gently, telling her simply that, while they were friends, and comrades, and as close as two people could probably ever be, she simply didn't feel that way about Vascha. It had stung, but Vascha was a soldier above all, and she had buried those feelings deep down into the most secure parts of her mind. She had never spoken of it again, and was even fairly certain that Ciara never thought about it at all. Still, here, in the bridge of The Ark, holding Ciara's broken, battered, nearly lifeless body in her arms, it was all Vascha could do to stop herself from bawling like an infant. She cradled Ciara's head in her arms and touched her forehead to hers.

"Oh god, I'm so sorry, Ciara."

Vascha felt a hand, weak and shaking, touch the back of her head.

"Get us out of here, Vasch', and I'll kiss you 'till you're absolutely sick of it."

Vascha drew back and saw Ciara's good eye flicker open. It was bloodshot and glassy, but it was alive, and it looked at her. Ciara's lips pursed into an awkward grin, made all the more difficult through the mass of swollen flesh around her mouth. Vascha could barely contain herself, tears and sobs and laughter all coming out of her in one instant as she held Ciara, hugging her body to hers.

"Can you stand?" Vascha asked, using one hand to wipe fresh tears from her black cheeks.

Ciara made one, pitiful move, flexing the muscles of her legs and back, wincing, and then releasing. She tried again, this time getting one knee raised, before again letting it fall back to the floor, grinding her teeth from the effort.

"I'm a little worse for wear," she said, trying to add levity despite her obvious pain.

Vascha nodded and, gathering her strength, collected the tall Italian mutant in her arms and lifted her up. In normal circumstances, her body was more than strong enough to carry her teammate, but after hours upon hours of exertion, and countless bumps and bruises and cuts inflicted on her flesh, her muscles seemed to scream from the effort as she hefted Ciara's weight.

"Sinister?" Ciara asked weakly, barely more than a whisper.

"Taken care of," Vascha said, turning to look where she had left his body, "He's..."

Vascha's blood turned to ice. Sinister was gone. She whipped her head this way and that, peering into the expanse of the massive, dimly lit bridge, trying to see where he had gone, and finding nothing.

"Shit," she hissed. They had to go. Now.

It occurred to Vascha that she hadn't the slightest clue as to where to go from here. The schematics of The Ark that she had committed to memory seemed only a fuzzy, half-formed image in her exhausted mind. She tried to calm down, tried to think carefully, but she seemed to be in some kind of stupor as she looked around the huge command deck, gazing helplessly at the many doors.

"Escape pods."

"What?" Vascha looked at Ciara cradled in her arms, "What did you say?"

Ciara lifted an arm and pointed to the far end of the bridge, "Logan says to use the escape pods."

"'Logan says'?" Vascha repeated carefully. Ciara must have been hallucinating, from blood loss, shock, Sinister's mental assault, or all three.

Ciara simply nodded and pointed again. Vascha followed her gaze. _Of course!_ The port and starboard sides of the bridge were lined with small, two-person escape pods in the event of a cataclysmic emergency. It was not a standard design on most airships, but on a vessel of The Ark's size, the crew that manned the bridge would not have time to make it to another deck if they needed to evacuate quickly. She spotted the pods easily, little more than sealed, circular portholes along the edges of the bridge's gigantic viewing port that made up and entire wall. The hatches twinkled with green lights, indicating their readiness. Vascha began walking to the nearest one, her senses on high alert as she was more than aware that she had no clue where Sinister was.

She reached the hatch and, hefting Ciara into one arm, slapped the large switch that would open it. Instantly, a red light began flashing and an alarm started to howl, but that did not concern Vascha. Engaging an emergency system on The Ark was bound to trigger an alert. It could not be helped. The small portal slid open, and she looked inside. It was cramped, little more than two plush seats lined with conventional harnesses and several kinetic dampeners.

Vascha sat up on the lip of the hatch and began to haul Ciara into the small escape pod. In the center of the small console within the pod and also on the wall nearest the hatch inside the bridge itself, a green, holographic interface sprang to life. It projected only one, solitary button, and the word "Launch?" spelled out in thick, blocky letters. Vascha felt tears of pain and exertion roll down her cheeks as the muscles in her neck, back and arms burned from their prolonged and merciless use. Finally, Ciara's full weight tumbled into the tiny craft, her body splayed awkwardly on the floor between the seats.

Vascha felt her body practically wilt from the relief. They were going to make it.

"It's alright, Ciara" Vascha said, bracing her hands agains the mouth of the hatch, ready to pull herself in, "We're getting out of here."

There was a bright flash of red light, and Vascha felt something warm in the small of her back. Then the pain came, like a hot blade up her spine. She felt her grip on the hatch loosen, felt her body began to tumble backwards back into the bridge of The Ark. The metal floor rushed up and hit her across the face, chest, and arm as she twisted in the air, trying to save herself from the short fall. As though she had suddenly remembered how to breathe again, Vascha let out a coughing gasp as she felt the burning in her lower back shoot down into her legs.

Vascha craned her neck, turned her body, despite the agony it caused her, and saw, not a hundred feet away, Mister Sinister, one hand raised, glowing red and crackling with energy. His head was attached to his neck as though it had never left, no evidence of her earlier attack apparent save for a thin, purple line across the flesh under his jaw. His face was a white mask, devoid of any expression.

There was no time to think, no time to consider option or tactics. Vascha drew one of Logan's blades from the sheathe at her hip, twisted on the ground with a grunt, and threw it. It sailed through the air and passed perfectly through the holographic button that still shone in a bright green rendering over the escape pod's console. The console beeped once, and the pod's doors slammed shut.

There was a loud slapping noise that came from the sealed hatch, and Vascha gazed up from her position on the metal floor. Ciara had somehow made it to her knees inside the cramped escape pod, and was pressing her face against the small glass porthole, slamming her open palm against the door, her expression a vision of panic and terror. She stared into Vascha's eyes, and though the hatch had been extensively soundproofed, Vascha could hear her teammate scream in protest.

"No! No! No!"

"I'm sorry, Ciara," was all Vascha could manage. There was really nothing more she could say.

There was a rumbling noise as the escape pod's small repulsion engines fired, carrying Ciara into the New Mexico sky, now glowing orange with the coming dawn. Vascha hoped that Ciara would forgive her one day. She hoped Ben would too. She hoped all of them, her whole team, would one day forgive her for leading them so perfectly into defeat.

Despite the pain in her back, in her legs, in her whole entire body, Vascha braced herself with her arms, got her legs under her, and lifted herself up, turning to face Sinister, who still stood, silent and expressionless, ready to deliver his killing blow.


	24. From Russia with Hate

Gansükh balled his fists in anger and frustration, and fought down the urge to start screaming at the people around him. It was no wonder to him now why SHIELD had been unable to do anything but stand by and watch as the United States had slowly crumbled apart; They were so encumbered by bureaucratic dead weight that, even now, when one of the most salient crises that had even befallen the organization had landed in their lap, they were practically handcuffed by indecision.

Since Travis had brought them to the bridge and convinced General Cole that they were not SHIELD's enemy, they were still not exactly treated warmly. The armed security personnel stationed on the command deck still eyed them warily as dozens of technicians went about their various responsibilities aboard the ship. A first, after Cole had conceded that Gansükh and the others were not an immediate threat, they had still tried to disarm them. In the end, Ben had been forced to surrender his commandeered rifle, but Rin and Gansükh had been allowed to keep their weapons. Gansükh wondered if Hunter still kept a combat knife hidden somewhere on his person, and whether or not he might still end up needing it.

Gansükh's main source of consternation came in the form of a large holographic display situated in the middle of the dimly-lit bridge. On it was rendered pixelated avatars representing several high-ranking members of SHIELD, who were conferred with on every decision. While General Cole seemed to have sovereignty over military ops within the organization, the situation with Sinister and The Ark had now elevated into the political and socio-economic hemispheres, on which Cole had to consult with other members of what had already been referred to several times as 'The Counsel.' What the members looked and sounded like, Gansükh could not tell. Their features and voices were distorted and hidden, so that they each had the some robotic monotone, and their faces were little more than blocks of changing colors. If he had to guess, the people represented were of former American citizenship, and likely had been in positions of power before the nation had come to its unceremonious end.

One thing was clear, though. Vascha had been correct. Much as they did not seem to want to say it out loud, SHIELD was pursuing every option available, no matter how futile or ridiculous, _except_ the oft-mentioned nuclear attack. They most definitely did not want The Ark destroyed. Crippled, damaged, or even rendered essentially inoperable, yes, but not destroyed. There was something hidden in The Ark that was very sensitive, and, apparently, very valuable to SHIELD.

"For the third time," Cole snarled, chewing on the end of an unlit cigar, "Any aircraft approaching The Ark, including our best stealth fighters, will be picked up by her array almost twenty miles out. Now that she's fully operational, a frontal assault of any kind is suicide."

"What about an electro-magnetic pulse?" one of the synthesized voices probed, "Disrupting her electronic equipment?"

"Even if we had ordinance that was EMP-capable large enough to fully cripple The Ark, which we don't," Cole rubbed the bridge of his nose, "We can't guarantee that her shield's wouldn't just deflect the attack."

Gansükh exhaled sharply in frustration. These fools were so caught up in their secrets that they were going to talk themselves into a nuclear winter.

"In any case," Cole frowned, "The primary objective right now is devising some way to stop any attack launched from The Ark in retaliation for our assassination attempt on Sinister. From our current position, we can observe any launch through standard optics, so we'll be able to see a missile even if our arrays can't detect their stealth modules, but we can't maintain this pattern forever."

"What about the Tempest Protocol?" another synthesized voice asked, "Can that be put into effect?"

Cole stole glances at Gansükh and his teammates before turning back to the holographic interface. Gansükh searched his memory, but could not recall ever hearing or reading anything in the various SHIELD documents he'd come across over the years referencing something called 'Tempest Protocol.' Whatever it was, merely invoking its name seemed to put Cole in a much more guarded state of mind.

_Secrets within lies within deceptions. How do they keep track of it all?_

"I'm going to pretend," Cole said in measured tones, "That I did not just hear you suggest that, sir. Beside the fact that it in no way helps our current situation, that course of action was placed in permanent lockdown before you and I gained out current ranks."

"May I ask what 'Tempest Protocol' is?" Travis asked.

"You may not," another member of the counsel snapped.

Gansükh felt his features contort into a snarl. He had had just about enough of secrets. He felt helpless here, and with every moment that passed, the window of opportunity for Vascha and Ciara to escape alive was growing smaller. Maybe he could just start breaking things until they gave him and his comrades a small aircraft, some fuel, and all the guns they could carry back to The Ark, just to be rid of them.

"Hey," he began, stepping forward to the holographic display, ready to assert himself to this collection of comfortable, anonymous smooth-talkers who had probably sever seen real danger in their lives, but he was cut off by a sudden shrill alarm that sounded at a technician's console nearby.

"We have a launch from The Ark! Launch from The Ark!" the SHIELD operative shouted frantically, his fingers dancing across the holographic keys in front of him.

Cole leaped into action instantly, cutting the feed to the counsel and rushing to the technicians side, looking over his shoulder at the digital representation of the Helicarrier's bird's eye view of The Ark.

"Nuke?" Cole asked tersely.

"I don't know, sir. All I can tell you is that something was fired from the port side of the ship. We're tracking it with the optical array. We'll have a positive ID in fifteen seconds."

"If it's a two-stage stealth delivery system it'll be off our scanners by then!" Cole's voice began to raise in volume as the seconds passed, "Launch countermeasures, continue tracking!"

"Launching!"

Somewhere in the belly of the Helicarrier, there was a deep thumping sensation as the ship fired a battery of medium range, high velocity interceptor missiles, designed to cripple a nuclear delivery system without detonating the nuke itself. Gansükh watched the missiles streak into the distance through the bridge's view screen and felt his stomach tighten. There was something wrong about this. Sinister was not so foolish as to think SHIELD would not do exactly what they were doing right now. He had to know that they would be watching him like a hawk for any sign of aggression. And to fire just one missile... The whole thing was strange.

"Tracking..." the technician reiterated, his fingers still zipping across the console as the optical systems on the Helicarrier struggled to track and identify the object that rocketed away from The Ark. The camera above him clicked again and again as increasing levels of magnification were applied to the image. As the ground below them go closer, the object that streaked through the sky became clearer. Gansükh frowned. It didn't look like a missile. It looked like...

There was a soft pinging noise, and several SHIELD operative breathed a sigh of relief as they looked at the identifying marks that had been pulled off of the object.

"It's okay," the technician exhaled, "It's just an escape pod."

An escape pod. That could only mean one thing.

Without stopping to think, Gansükh crossed the short distance to the tech's console, drew a pistol from a holster at his side, and pressed it to the young man's temple.

"Call off the countermeasures," he said in a clear, measured tone, making sure the technician understood every word, "Right now."

The young man stared at the barrel of the gun pressed into his head, his whole body frozen, seemingly unable to even breathe. It occurred to Gansükh that this might be the first time the SHIELD technician had ever had a gun pointed at him. Well, that was tough. He was through asking, and through tip-toeing through the waves of bureaucracy that SHIELD employed. In his stomach, he knew there was only one reason for a single escape pod to be fired from The Ark.

Gansükh heard a click, and felt something hard press into the back of his own head. He turned slightly and saw General Cole, his extended arms, and the repulsion pistol he held in both hands. Unlike Gansükh's weapon, the repulsion pistol hummed slightly when Cole took the safety off. He felt it in the bottom of his neck.

Almost in the same moment, however, Cole's eye's widened as Rin slipped behind him, her short tanto pressed into the flesh under his chin, and the slightly longer wakizashi held edge-down across his chest. Ben and Hunter each placed themselves at Rin's back, so she could not be similarly overtaken. Hunter lifted his hands in a threatening gesture as the dozen members of the security team on the bridge reached for their own weapons, but seemed to think better of it when a strange, unnatural wind began to whip across their bodies, originating from seemingly nowhere. These men had probably rarely, if ever, encountered mutant powers in full-bloom, and they were unsure how to react. The whole room seemed to freeze. Gansükh took note that Travis had done nothing through all of this, despite having a repulsion pistol of his own strapped to his belt. Curious.

"It's an escape pod," Gansükh said quietly, looking back to Cole, "There's a good chance Ciara and Vascha are aboard it. You have to call off the countermeasures."

"There's also a good chance that Sinister knows we'd think that, and that object is still a nuke," Cole countered, his arms steady and poised, the grip around his gun tight, "I can't weigh two lives against hundreds of thousands, son. You know that I can't."

"General," Travis said, being careful to keep his distance from the epicenter of the Mexican standoff, "The range of a standard escape pod is too-"

"When I want you input, Agent Travis..." Cole began to berate the young operative, turned his head ever so slightly to look at him. Gansükh used the opportunity.

His mutant cloaking field engaged so quickly that, to most, it seemed as though Gansükh had simply disappeared. Cole's eyes went wide with confusion as he suddenly had no target. Gansükh twisted out of the pistol's range, reached up, and wrenched the weapon from Cole's grip in one fluid action. He dropped his cloak, now holding the repulsion pistol to Cole's temple, and his own to the technician's forehead.

"Call off the countermeasures," Gansükh said, speaking with slow, careful tones.

"I can't."

Gansükh looked at the technician, his face contorting between surprise and rage. The young man raised his hands high over his head in supplication, squeezing his eyes tightly as he spoke.

"Once they've been fired, I can't call off the missiles," he said quickly, "All I can do is disable their warheads."

"Do it," Gansükh took the barrel of the pistol off the technician's forehead and let the man turn back to his console.

* * *

><p>Ciara's knuckles were bleeding by the time she had calmed down enough to stop furiously punching the thick door of the escape pod. The pain was barely noticeable, a drop in the bucket, and the tears that came to Ciara's eyes were of frustration and anger, not agony.<p>

The Ark was far away now, little more than a dark, metallic shape that got further away in the small window of the hatch with every second that passed as the escape pod's small engine thundered away at a furious pace. Ciara could feel the slight press of g-force as the pod was propelled onward still through the New Mexico sky, which was now quickly turning to hues of pink and blue as the sun rose in the east.

"Damn you, Vascha," Ciara hissed bitterly through split and swollen lips. It was not her burden to take on Sinister by herself. They were a team. A family, even. Vascha had abandoned that, for what? Ciara's unreturned affection? Some misplaced idea that she ought to protect them? That wasn't her call to make. Wolverine had been as important to any of them as-

"Hey sport, you best get up here."

Ciara whipped around, her heart skipping a beat. The escape pod was barely large enough for two grown adults. There was no way that someone else had managed to slip into the craft without her seeing, even if she had been barely conscious when Vascha had shoved her in.

Logan sat in one of the two chairs, fastening the last strap of his harness as he looked over several displays that had begun to howl over the din of the pod's engine.

"You're not real," Ciara said stupidly and, unable to think of anything more constructive, added, "Sinister put you in my head."

"Look, darlin', we don't have a lot of time here," Logan, or whatever this being was, cocked an eyebrow at her in a painfully familiar way and gestured at the seat next to his, "Even if I ain't real, I'm talkin' sense here. Unless you think you can deflect these missiles by bleedin' at 'em, you should probably take the damn stick."

_Missiles?_

Ciara finally let her blinding anger and frustration subside enough to recognize the alarms that screeched from the many displays on the pod's console. Target-lock warnings.

She looked at Logan, or rather, her mind's version of him, swallowed, nodded, and, ignoring the sensation of someone reaching into her stomach and twisting every time she looked at the man that now shared the escape pod with her, sat down beside him and began to strap herself in. Her eyes widened as she looked at the rudimentary screens on the pod's center console. There were at least half a dozen missiles in pursuit of the tiny craft, closing fast. They had maybe twenty seconds.

"Oh, we are fucked," she snarled, but grasped the control stick that sat in front of her anyway, flipping a switch and feeling the craft lurch as it rescinded control to her.

"Well, accordin' to you I ain't real. So I'd say _you're_ fucked."

Ciara frowned as she took quick stock of the vessel. It was little more than a pair of seats strapped to a repulsion turbine. It had almost no maneuverability to speak of, only the most basic of countermeasures, and was burning through its fuel at an alarming rate. If a missile did hit them, it would probably punch a hole clean through the paper-thin hull before exploding. She may as well have been flying a bathtub attached to a rocket. It was designed to move two bodies from one point to the other as quickly as possible, not dodge and weave through a swarm of sub-sonic warheads.

"The question is," Logan's apparition grinned, "What are you gonna do about it?"

The center console emitted a loud ping, and Ciara slapped her hand over a toggle. The sound of flares launching from the sides of the pod resonated in the small space, and she jerked the stick hard to the left.

_Gonna be close_...

There was a deafening roar as the flares intercepted at least one missile, maybe two. The pod rattled and shook as Ciara lurched against her harness, gripping the control stick so tightly her bloodied knuckles had turned white. She glanced as the console.

"That got three," she said, a little surprised, "Only three left."

"That still puts us five feet short of a ten foot jump," Logan snarled as he was thrown against the restraints as Ciara threw the stick in the other direction, sending the pod into a corkscrew. He turned to look at her, "Any more flares?"

"Negative," Ciara grimaced.

It occurred to her that Sinister must have seriously screwed up something in her brain. Her conscious mind was so fooled by the apparition that had taken on Logan's shape and voice that she was now treating him as though he was as real as any other living person. This was some next-level schizophrenic, full-blown delusion. Maybe Sinister, in his zeal for torturing her mind with his lances of psychic pain, really had broken something in her mind. Of course, it wouldn't matter much if she died in the next fifteen seconds.

"We don't have the fuel to outrun 'em," the figment that looked like Logan observed. He looked at her, "Any ideas, sport?"

Ciara could think of only one. And it was just about the craziest she'd had all day.

"It's a good thing Madame Yuriko was able to get some birds for us to train for this stuff," Ciara smiled, though how she found any humor in the current situation, she hadn't the slightest clue.

She flipped several toggles and switches scattered over the screens and consoles. On the center console, a new window popped up warning her against her current course of action. She swiped her hand over the screen to override the warning and found the final switch, protected from casual use by a plastic cover. She opened the cover and twisted the knob inside, arming it.

She looked at Logan.

"Hang on."

The escape pod was designed to fire a repuslor blast from the nose of the craft when it detected the vessel had reached a close proximity to solid ground, reducing velocity to zero in almost three seconds flat, and making the painfully slow process of dangling from a parachute unnecessary. It was a single-use device that would eat up the last reserves of the engine's fuel. With almost zero maneuverability, very little fuel left, no flares, and no chance of reaching the ground before the missiles found them, firing the landing repuslor in mid-air was literally the last option available. With luck, the missiles would be unable to compensate for the drastic change in speed, and would lose the pod on their targeting computers. Of course, what happened after that was a part of the plan the Ciara had not yet crystalized.

The console sounded the proximity alarm.

Ciara pressed the button.

The change in velocity was so sudden and drastic that it knocked the air out of her lungs as she was thrown into the harness that crossed her chest and shoulders. The engine shuddered and the entire body of the escape pod shook and rattled and screeched in protest. Through the windshield, Ciara saw two missiles streak by, white clouds of vapor marking their path as they cut through the air. Almost immediately, she could see the guided projectiles waver, their course unsure now as the pod dropped out of their field of vision.

_That leaves one mo-_

Just as she had predicted, the skin of the escape pod was so thin and laughably armored that the missile punched clean through, nearly taking Ciara's head off as it lunged forward and buried its tip in the console. Ciara held her breath and squeezed her eye shut, waiting for the missile's payload to detonate.

But the explosion did not come.

Ciara cracked her one eye open and looked at the long, smooth, white object that smoked from the radiant heat it emitted.

_A dud?_

She cracked a grin and looked over at... No one. Logan was gone. She glanced around the pod, but she already knew there was nowhere he could be hiding.

The escape pod lurched, the engine whined, and Ciara's heart began to collide with her throat as the small metal box she was encased in coughed out the last remnants of its fuel. The pod began to fall.

Without any clear notion of what she was going to do, Ciara set about furiously unstrapping herself from the cushioned seat. The pod began to spin awkwardly as it reached its terminal velocity, and through the windshield, now severely cracked after the impact of the missile that still impaled the vessel, she could see the ground rushing up to meet her. She did the quick arithmetic in her head, using the altitude figures that still displayed in rapidly-falling figures on one of the small screens that still functioned. She had only seconds before the pod would hit the ground.

The pod twisted strangely as it caught a pocket of humid air, and Ciara was flung into the side of the cockpit, banging her hip and shoulder on the plastic and metal. She glanced frantically around her. What was she going to do?

"By the door, kid."

Logan was not in the pod, that much Ciara knew, but that was his voice, nonetheless. She looked back through the tiny cabin at the hatch, then looked to the right and left. Nothing. Above it, however, was a small pouch that had been affixed to the bulkhead with two bolts. She read the words on the dark canvas package.

_'Personal Repulsion Devices. Emergency Only.'_

There was no time to consider that a personal repulsor needed to be tightly strapped to her body to work properly. There was no time to think about the fact that a repulsor was only guaranteed to save her if deployed from a height far greater than she was at now. There was barely time to even breathe as Ciara pulled herself across the small vessel, tore one of the small devices with its web of straps and cords from its pouch, and gripped the manual latch the held the door in place. Gritting her teeth, summoning strength where no strength ought to have existed anymore, she pulled the protesting lever open. The hatch flew off and away from the pod, and Ciara jumped through it, pushing as hard as she could away from the craft, trying to create distance between herself and the doomed hunk of metal.

The ground filled her vision, racing up to meet her at a devastating pace. The air seemed to tear at her, slapping her exposed skin like hundreds of iron paddles as she tumbled. Ciara gripped the repulsor in both hands, trying to see it clearly with only one eye that was being pulled at by the air that buffeted her face.

She discarded the idea of slipping into the harness attached to the machine outright. No time. Instead, she bunched the various straps in her hands, wrapping them around her wrists and forearms and knuckles as tightly as she could. She flipped the safety on the device and managed to look down.

_I'm not going to make it._

She clicked the button on the repulsor and felt the small engine in her hands awaken with all the subtlety of a live grenade. It jerked upward sharply, nearly tearing her arms off as the small machine shrieked with the force it exerted. Pain flew up her arms and into her shoulders, her neck, her back as the sudden and violent change in direction tore muscle tissue.

_Don't let go. Don't let go._ _Don't let go..._

She could make out the features of the terrain below her. It wasn't going to work. She was shedding speed quickly, but she was still falling too fast. She was going to hit the ground with the speed of a head-on car crash.

_This _can_ work. Just hang on. Hang on!_

The repulsor gave out one more sustained, piercing shriek as the miniaturized turbine struggled to stop her descent. Her left shoulder shifted, then popped as the force dislocated the joint. Ciara grunted, bit her lip until she tasted blood.

_Do. Not. Let. Go._

Finally, at long last, the ground got what it wanted. It reached up and met Ciara's body with all the softness and tenderness of a blacksmith's hammer meeting an anvil. Instantly and completely, Ciara's world went dark.

* * *

><p>Vascha found that, unlike her encounter with X-23, there was no crippling sense of dread and impending oblivion that consumed her thoughts as she stared at Sinister's open palm, snapping and hissing with electric red light. Maybe it was shock, maybe it was the fact that she was now sure her team was relatively safe, or maybe her mind simply no longer had the energy to express fear or anxiety anymore. She didn't feel the heavy numbness that she'd felt before. Rather, she felt as though a thick veil had been lifted, as though a weight had been taken off of her shoulders. Maybe this time she really was ready to die.<p>

Abruptly, Sinister frowned and lowered his hand, which ceased its angry red glow. He nodded his head towards the claw that Vascha had thrown into the holographic display to launch the escape pod. It sat, still quivering, protruding from the metal and plastic face of the display.

Sinister opened his mouth to speak, but seemed surprised when nothing left his lips but a thick croaking noise. Visibly perturbed, Sinister reached up to his throat and, with a series of grotesque pops and snaps, realigned his trachea, which had apparently not healed in the correct place.

"Pick it up," Sinister said finally, his voice raspy as he pushed his windpipe back into alignment, again nodding his head to the claw stuck in the wall.

Vascha looked at Sinister, then at her weapon, then back again. Slowly, cautiously, never taking her eyes off of the man for more than an instant, she made her way to the console. As much as she tried, she could not hide the slight limp in her gait, brought on by, amongst other injuries, the burning sting in her lower back where Sinister's energy blast had struck her. It concerned her somewhat that the area he had hit radiated heat now more than pain. She wasn't sure what that could mean. She reached the blade and drew it easily from the rigid material of the console. Looking over her shoulder at Sinister and seeing that he had not moved, she slipped the adamantium blade into the sheathe at her hip, joining it again with its twin.

She turned and looked at him and waited. After a time, Sinister walked casually over to the nearest console and pulled up a large chair and sat in it, regarding her cooly, with a vague interest as though she were a piece of theater. He steepled he fingers.

"I thought you might like a chance to finally explain yourself," he said, "Uninterrupted by all this senseless violence."

Vascha stared at him.

"Why it is you what you do," he said, like a director offering motivation to an actor, "It's something that's always fascinated me over the years. We are each of a us a multitude. A complex series of connections that either strengthen or sever as we go through life. What we start as is different from what we live as is different from what we die as. It's what got me to studying evolution in the first place, you see."

Again, Vascha offered no reply, simply gazed at him, uncomprehending, with her tar-colored eyes.

Sinister shook his head bemusedly and leaned on one elbow and looked at her. "You have no idea how beautiful you are. I don't mean in a caustic, neanderthal sense, you understand. Beauty, to me, is efficiency. You were born a mutant at a time when being born a mutant is practically a death sentence. Yet, despite that, you managed to thrive, and to acquire the knowledge and skills necessary to become the best, most lethal apex-predator that you can be. And then you came to me. Everything on this planet worth something eventually comes to me."

"I came to you," Vascha said finally, her voice a low growl, "Because you killed Logan."

"Irrelevant," Sinister sighed, as though her words had bored him. "Logan killed many men in his life, you know. I'm not saying that to show you the justice of his death. I don't believe in that concept. Justice, I mean. There are any number of good, honest sons and daughters and husbands and wives of men the Logan killed over the years. If one of them had murdered Logan, would you still crave vengeance the same way? My point is that you shouldn't be more willing to throw your life away in some confused sense of honor and duty because you think I'm a 'bad' person.

"No, you came to me because there was no other way your life could have played out. You might imagine to yourself that your existence might have been different if this had happened or that had not. You might think that your life might have been better if Logan still lived, but I must ask you, realistically, what is the point of thoughts like that? What is, is. And what is not, can not be. It's hard to see the pattern for someone as young as you are, I imagine, but if you had lived even half the years I have, it would start to all make sense. How everything has a path, a trajectory, sometimes nearly in discernible, but always there. You ended up here, in this room, right now, because that is what you were made to do. Some would call it fate or destiny. I simply call it reality."

Vascha shifted uncomfortably. Why was he saying all of this to her? She noticed that the heat in the small of her back had stopped spreading, and was now pulsing in time with her heartbeat. There was still a sharpness to it, but Vascha could not help now but think that it felt... Sort of good. Soothing, even.

"I want you to know that I didn't kill Logan because I bore him any particular ill will," Sinister confessed, "I have a plan... A design, if you will, that I promise you will make this world a better place. Logan sought to uncover and stop that design before it was ready for fruition. He could have been a part of it, and he said no. I told him as much many, many times, and he refused. That is why he died."

"And you desecrate him with your foot soldiers."

"Another concept I don't subscribe to. 'Desecration.' It's an archaic and medieval institution built, like most things people believe in, on the bedrock of fear. Any sensible system or enterprise on this planet uses some kind of mode of recycling. When Logan was dead, his body was material to be reappropriated, nothing more. I did not, it may disappoint you to learn, create them in my laboratory while laughing and thinking of how it might upset his students. My design requires tools to be properly executed. To not use the best tools that I could create would be to make myself vulnerable. As a rule, that is something that I try never to do."

Vascha took this in. She turned her head slightly, and wondered how many seconds it would take to jump into another escape pod and launch. Sinister followed her gaze and frowned.

"I don't want you to think that I'm going to let you leave, because I'm not. I let the others slip through my fingers. Not you, though. You've come too far. Before, you had my curiosity. Then, you had my admiration. Now, dear girl, you have my undivided fascination. You can submit yourself to me, or try to engage me in another senseless conflict. Either way will produce the same result for me. I would have rather kept your entire team here, but being left with you, I'd prefer not to have to waste your life senselessly.

"So," he opened his hands to her, "Why are you here? What was it that brought you to me? How is it that Logan created, it seems without ever intending to, some of the finest warriors I've ever encountered?"

The question made Vascha think of Ciara, of all things. Something she had said while she had been Sinister's captive.

Puzzle pieces fell together with such resonance in her head that she could practically hear the click of insight as it all began to make a horrible, macabre sense. Vascha felt her knees wobble slightly at the gravity, the sheer scale of what was unfolding before her. A sensation like vertigo gripped her chest, and combined with the pain and blood loss she had suffered, she felt very close to fainting. She struggled to catch her breath, as though she had been sprinting.

"Terminus," she whispered, her voice carrying through the vast command deck, echoing lightly off the metal surfaces as she quoted Ciara's words, "It all comes back to Terminus."

Sinister's face tightened for a fraction of a second, becoming a grim mask of seriousness before his lips parted and he smiled.

"None of this," Vascha gestured around her, "Nothing you've done here would have been possible without the Terminus epidemic."

Sinister's smiled deepened.

"You," Vascha pointed at the man before her, not believing her own revelation even as the words tumbled out of her mouth, "You created it."

Sinister began to chuckle then, his voice like crackling sandpaper, as he raised his hands in front of him and began to slowly, deliberately clap.

"Congratulations," he said, "You're one of about a dozen people on the earth to possess that knowledge. And you're one of the only ones to have pieced it together yourself."

Vascha felt suddenly cold, as though she'd just swallowed a bucket of ice. The further the information sank into her brain, the heavier, the more horrifying it felt in her guts. Unconsciously, she brushed one hand against her lower abdomen, feeling the place where a child would never grow in the womb that would never be fertile. _He_ had done it to her, and countless other would be-mothers over the years.

Like a deluge, the events that had been related to her second-hand from the past decades fell over her. All the fighting, all the death, the war that had brought nations to their knees and left the entire mutant population decimated, unable to replenish their numbers over time, all the darkness that had plagued the planet for years upon years... All of it was caused by the man who sat languid in the chair before her.

She thought of her parents, of her years spent in the mutant internment camps, she thought of the X-Men who had rescued her, taken her in, and then died in the months that followed. She thought of Logan. Her mentor, her master, her surrogate father. She thought of him dying, being murdered.

Vascha's knees again threatened to give out beneath her. She swallowed, let out one shuddering breath, and stared at Sinister.

"But you're a mutant," she said, not comprehending, "_Why?_"

"As you said," Sinister spread his arms, gesturing around him, "Without Terminus, none of this would have been possible. I admit, when SHIELD commissioned the virus from me in late decades of the last century, I did not think much of it. Mutant and human relations were improving, and there was no real danger that SHIELD would ever release it. Far too decimating. The more I thought upon it, however, the more I began to see its potential."

"SHIELD asked you to make it?"

"Mutants, you see, were becoming stagnant," Sinister continued, ignoring her interruption, "When I first began to comprehend the phenomenon of mutation many decades ago, I knew that it was a product of tremendous upheaval and strife in the human race, like any instance of radical and rapid evolution. I believed, and still believe, that mutants are the next step in the future of the species, and humans are on their way out. However, the potential of _homo sapiens superior_ was in danger. Thanks to the efforts of the late Sirs Xavier and Lehnsherr, for the first time in history, something that was not supposed to happen was happening. The old species and the new were _cooperating_. I could not abide that. It is mutantkind's fate to overtake humans.

"So, through my various liaisons, I released the Terminus virus on my own, and staged an attack on a SHIELD laboratory, making it seem to them that it had been their own inept security and carelessness that had been at fault. They have spent years and many millions of dollars and who knows how many lives defending that secret. In fact, the hard drive on this ship is one of the only places where the hard data of that event can be found. It's why SHIELD has been so meager and weak and slow to step in over the years. And I have spent the subsequent decades reaping the benefits. In the event that The Ark is destroyed, its system of cloud data will upload the incriminating evidence to every news net on the planet, and SHIELD, as well as any hope they may have of restoring the United States, will die. I'm willing to bet they left that section of my conditions out of the vid they showed you, am I correct?"

"But..." Vascha puzzled, holding her hands out to her sides, "How does rendering mutants infertile _help _them?"

Sinister smiled, raised a hand, and pointed at her.

"Look at yourself. The product of an entire life spent beaten under the hammer of strife and suffering and pain. Your whole existence, the world around you has attempted to crush you into dust. Out of the hundreds of millions of soft, privileged, _cooperative_ mutants that once roamed the planet, I calculate that only perhaps ten thousand still live. Ten thousand of the most determined, tenacious, indomitable survivors the mutant species have ever known. The majority of that number sit in the lower deck of this very vessel, in stasis. And when the time is right, and humanity has vacated the planet, I will use their unique genetic characteristics to build the new future of mutants. Including yours, dear girl."

Sinister turned in his chair to face the console beside him and pressed several buttons. A long, low alarm chimed, which he silenced with a swipe of his thumb. In the air above the station, numbers popped into existence and began a countdown from ten minutes. Vascha felt her heartbeat quicken.

"A nuclear attack is rather crude by my own standards, but I did promise SHIELD what would happen if they interfered," he said, almost bored, "My ultimate solution is far more elegant, but at times these fools only understand blunt force."

"Final solution," Vascha repeated, her eyes narrowing as she turned his words over in her head. Then, understanding: "...Ominous. You created a human version of Terminus. It wasn't some random mutation."

Again, Sinister smiled and gazed at her admiringly, "Such a bright, beautiful creature. You'd think someone at SHIELD might have made the connection. It would seem they're far too preoccupied with covering their own tracks in the whole scheme of things."

"_Why__?_" Vascha asked again, feeling almost frenzied with questions, "Why do any of this? You don't have to nuke innocent people because of SHIELD. You didn't _need_ to destroy the mutant species just to prove an academic point about genetics, and you don't need to do the same thing to the humans. _Why are you doing this?_"

The countdown read nine minutes and thirty seconds.

"Do you believe in God, Vascha?"

Vascha faltered, unsure of how to respond to such an obviously loaded query. Sinister didn't wait, simply reading the expression on her face.

"I thought not. Nor do I. But still, it's not an unhelpful model to aspire to."

"You want to be God?"

Sinister chuckled, "No, Vascha. But I'd like to come as close as possible. That disturbs some people, as you can imagine. I can see in your face that it disturbs you. But still, it's what my path in life has led me to. I keep every promise that I make, I improve everything around me that is worth improving, and everything that is not, I leave to the wayside. Any obstacle that sets itself before me, I crush it. It's the only way I've ever known how to be. There is no 'why'. There is only a scrupulous accounting for what is and what is not."

The countdown read eight minutes.

Abruptly, Sinister stood, brushed some of the crusted, purple blood that still clung to his now fully-healed face, and folded his arms behind his back, studying her.

"Logan is gone. Your parents are gone. You owe nothing to the dead. Further resistance against me will be pointless to the point of laughability. Nevertheless, I won't ask you to join me the way Laura and the Nasty Boys have, because I know you still desperately cling to some misguided view of honor and justice. So I will say only this: Submit now, this very moment, and you will no longer suffer. Resist, and the result will be much the same, with the addition of some of the worst pain you will ever endure in your short, violent life. In the end, you will still serve my empire. In the end, you will all serve."

Vascha frowned and cocked an eyebrow. Suddenly she was aware that the warm, burning sensation in her back had disappeared entirely. She reached up and felt the small of her back where Sinister's red spike of energy had hit her. Nothing.

_Nothing?_

For half an instant, Vascha was back in Japan, in Madame Yuriko's compound. Yuriko herself had not taken much of a hand in their physical training for combat. That had been Logan's domain. However, at the wizened Japanese matron's insistence, she had taken time out of their rigorous drilling to occasionally give them formal lessons pertinent to their lives as warriors.

That particular day, Yuriko had opened a massive file on her holographic console. An overflowing tome written by the late Dr. Hank McCoy regarding the unique physics on known mutant abilities. Vascha and Ben were perhaps the only students of the six that seemed to be paying attention to the admittedly dry material; Gansükh sat attentively, but his eyes had glassed over some five minutes into the lecture. Ciara openly snoozed in her chair, having been drilled mercilessly by Logan only hours before. Rin, unable to read anything on the holographic screen, may have been listening, but her head drifted aimlessly back and fourth as she sampled the various sounds of the room. Hunter rested his chin in one hand, while casually doodling on his personal data desk.

"In the realm of energy casting," Yuriko pointed to a graph that filled the air over her desk, "Dr McCoy found that, in general, most mutants use a filtered form of solar energy stored in their bodies, and refiltered through various organs to create a variety of effects. More rarely, there are cases of mutant utilizing dark energy, plasma-based energy, and bio-organic energy. A reliable rule of thumb has been to visually ascertain what type of power is being used based on the color of the projections. Generally, red indicates some type of solar power."

_Red indicates some type of solar power._

Vascha felt her lower back again. There seemed to be a bit of residual bruising from the sheer force of impact, but other than that, her skin, naturally hungry for any light, especially solar, _had absorbed the blast_. The pain she'd felt had simply been kinetic force agonizingly exerted on her spine and surrounding muscles.

The countdown read six minutes and forty seconds.

Something resembling calm seemed to wash over Vascha then, like warm water being poured down her back. She knew, had known from the moment she sent Ben back to the Helicarrier against his wishes, that she would probably not be able to beat Sinister on her own. She had accepted that there was a fairly certain chance that Ciara's rescue would spell her own demise. What had bothered her was not the impending sense of oblivion, but rather the idea that she might not accomplish anything else with her death. But she could damn well try. And now, she knew a way.

For the second time, Vascha reached behind her back and flipped off the safety on the detonator she wore there.

Sinister, growing visibly impatient, furrowed his eyebrows. "I don't make such an offer lightly, girl. By all rights, I should kill you right now for the aggravation you've cause me."

Vascha drew the blades from her hips and looked at them, regarding her own reflection in their metallic surface. Sinister eyed the movement carefully.

"How did you kill Logan?"

Sinister, seemingly disarmed by the question, frowned at her, questioning her with his ruby-like eyes.

"I don't see how that could mean anything to you at this moment."

Vascha gave Sinister a long, steady look. "It means everything to me. It's what I think about when I go to sleep, and what I think about when I wake up. For two years I've been burning with that question, so I could do the same thing to whoever killed him. Now that I have the opportunity, I'd like to know."

The countdown read five minutes and thirty seconds.

Sinister laughed. One low, short note of humor, one corner of his mouth raising in a crooked grin as he said, "Vascha, the moment I entered Logan's life, his life was at an end. History has placed much reverence in the indestructibility of the Wolverine. All he was, all he _really_ was, was a collection of admirable elements. It was simply a matter of applying pressure in the correct places.

"If you'd like to know more than that," Sinister crossed his arms and smiled, "I'm afraid you'll be disappointed. Some secrets I do plan on keeping, especially since you're worth more to me alive, and I really would have to take steps toward ending your life if I gave that away."

Vascha sighed when she realized that it was the only explanation that she would receive. It was worth a try, she supposed. In the end, it would not make much difference if she knew how Logan had met his end or not, if for no other reason than her end was about to be upon her.

"Sinister," Vascha raised the claws in front of her, her voice adopting a steady, formal tone, "I have come here to exact my revenge. You killed my master, and as his retainer, I am here to repay the debt of his life. Prepare to receive your judgement."

Sinister had only a moment to cock his eyebrow.

With what remaining strength she had in her, Vascha bounded forward. The distance between herself and Sinister was small, only a dozen yards or so. She ran low, her center of gravity hugging the metal floor as her boots thudded against it, the claws readied in her fists. As she sprinted, she opened herself up, letting light flood into her body with an abandon she rarely felt. The light in the room drew into her like a black hole, coursing into her skin and filling her body with a last precious boost of energy. The room went pitch dark immediately. She did not believe that darkness would be any hinderance to Sinister, and her suspicion was confirmed when she saw no concern at all in his face as the light vacated the bridge.

"So sad," Sinister muttered, and raised his hand.

The red bolt from his hand lit up the room like an explosion, the riot of light streaking towards her like a missile. Every part of her, every last fiber of her being screamed at her to dodge, to maneuver around the attack. Vascha ignored all of it, and lowered her head, bracing herself. She concentrated on one thing: Absorbing the light.

The blast hit her with the force of a sledgehammer, catching her full in the breastbone, sending her upper body reeling backward. For a moment, her balance temporarily lost, she faltered in her stride, nearing dropping to her knees as the impact knocked the breath out of her and bruised in the tough bones of her ribcage.

And yet, the beam did not cut through her, did not burn, did not tear her apart the way it was intended to. She felt the solar energy that made up the blast coil and protest as her skin drew it in, diffused it, and fed it into her body. She felt her heart thunder and her muscles grow tight as the excess of energy threatened to burst clean out of her. In her whole life, she'd never taken on so much power. She felt at the same time sickened and supercharged.

In a fraction of a second, Vascha righted herself, and continued forward, closing the distance at lightening speed.

The shock that she saw on Sinister's face was perhaps the sweetest thing her eyes had beheld in quite a long time.

Sinister clearly did not spend much of his time preparing for hand-to-hand combat, but that did not mean that he was not well practiced, nor that his physical abilities could not fill the gap where experience left him wanting. As she drew closer, his face contorted into a sour expression, he balled his fists, and assumed a fighting stance.

Vascha ducked easily under his first swing, a powerful haymaker that probably would have gone completely through her body if it had connected. She pivoted, turned, and before Sinister could react, shot out one arm, raking the claw across his eyes, cutting deep into the sockets.

Sinister grunted, brought one hand up to his face, and swung blindly through the air that Vascha had occupied a moment ago.

Vascha could not waste any time. Sinister's healing factor would mend his damaged eyes in mere moments. Before he could get a fix on her again, she reached into her armored shirt, tattered and ripped in a dozen places, and found what she was looking for. She produced the explosive package, stained with her own blood but undamaged, and slapped it against the console from which Sinister had armed The Ark's nuclear strike. With luck, Sinister would not notice it.

The countdown read four minutes.

Vascha felt a hand grab her shoulder, squeezed the muscle and flesh so hard she felt a popping sensation deep in her neck, accompanied instantly with a fiery pain. Without looking, she reached behind her and drove one of Logan's blades into the soft tissue of Sinister's wrist. His grip faltered only a moment, but it was enough, and Vascha twisted and ducked out of his grasp.

Sinister's next strike was faster, more accurate as his vision was already returning, and caught her in the side of the jaw. Vascha's vision lit up with fireworks as her head snapped backward, her lips filling with blood and fragments of her teeth. Another punch drove into her gut, and she spat the contents of her mouth in a spray onto the floor.

Sinister stopped his assault momentarily, taking a step back and wiping his slashed face, testing his reforming eyes. He blinked hard through the purple gore and grimaced, his healed, red eyes blazing with light.

Vascha spat another mouthful of blood and broken molars and looked up at him, still wheezing from the blow to her stomach.

"You hit like a pussy," she croaked, smiling with black, broken lips, wet with her tar-colored blood.

She dodged his next swing, just barely, and in the space of moments, riddled his ribs and abdomen with punctures and slashes from Logan's claws. Sinister cried out, more from rage than pain, and reached out to grab her as he shielded his body with his other arm.

_You won't get a better opportunity,_ a voice in her head snapped, _Now!_

Vascha dodge around the outreached hand, grabbed the thick, powerful wrist, and with all her strength, pulled Sinister towards her. They both fell awkwardly into the console, their limbs tangled together in knots as they each tried to gain purchase on the other. Fueled by pain, rage, and the unbridled energy she had stolen from Sinister's energy blast, Vascha managed to climb atop Sinister's muscular form, raised both claws above her head, and drove them into his shoulders, pinning him to the desk. Directly on top of the explosive package she had placed there.

If this was anything more than an inconvenience to Sinister, she could not tell from his face, as, despite being physically anchored on his back, he cocked his fist and struck her with two jabs into her nose, snapping the bone.

He wound up his other hand, ready to strike again, but Vascha, her vision nearly obliterated by the hard strikes to her face, twisted out of the way, wrapped her legs around Sinister's waist, and grabbed at the console with one hand, finding purchase and holding on with all her strength, keeping the man pinned as tightly to the station as possible. There could be no chance of his escape.

She had always heard, and had always assumed, that her entire life would flash before her eyes just before death. Instead, the only image that popped into her head was her mother. It was, in fact, the first memory that she could recall having. She had been a toddler then, her mutation unknown to herself and the world, her skin soft and white, her hair a honey blonde and tied in a bow behind her head, much the way her mother had worn her own hair.

Her mother held her, comforted her, but for what or why, Vascha could not recall. She had sung a Russian lullaby to her, stroked her cheek, kissed her forehead, and squeezed her tightly.

"Remember," she had said, "Remember, no matter what happens, that your mother loves you."

She would venture a guess that her mother, long dead, had not imagined in her darkest nightmares that her little girl would find herself where she was now. If she had, perhaps she would have had something else to offer her daughter. But she had done her best.

Vascha took one last look at Sinister's face, contorted with anger and pain and confusion at having been temporarily bested by a teenage girl. No doubt he was planning his next move, scheming as to how he would beat her bloody, maybe even kill her, if given the slightest opportunity, the slightest opening. She would let him have neither.

Vascha squeezed her eyes shut, clenched her broken teeth in her shattered mouth, and lowered her head as she smothered Sinister ever harder in her body's grip.

_I love you, matʹ._

She reached behind her with her free hand, grasped the detonator, and pressed the button.

Vascha did not feel the force of the detonation, nor the massive wave of fire that engulfed her and Sinister and nearly a quarter of The Ark's command deck. The next thing she knew, her body had been slammed into the far wall of the bridge, breaking what was left of her back to be broken.

She hit the floor with a wet smack. Somewhere in her brain, she tried to lift herself up, but with the one eye that had been saved from the explosion, she could see that where her arm had once been, nothing but a bloody stump remained, black, onyx-like bone poking out of the pulp. Her vision began to close, as though an aperture in her eye had been tightened. She could feel no pain. She felt her heart thump, once, weakly, then again even fainter than before. She could not breathe, could hardly move, could barely think. She had the odd sensation of falling backwards, despite being on her stomach.

_You're dying_, a voice said in her head.

With what remained of her strength, Vascha twisted her neck, painfully slow, and took in the room with her dwindling vision. She found what she was looking for. Sinister's body, what was left of it, smoking and burning in an unceremonious pile, a few yards off. Dead? She couldn't be sure. But she had done her best.

_It's time to go,_ the voice said, calm and reassuring.

She had feared the pain of death, but found nothing now but a cool sensation that traveled up and down her back, as though she had been dipped in a gently-lapping pool. Her vision gave out entirely, and all went dark. She felt the last remnants of muscle spasms, but now what seemed like worlds away.

Vascha Aleksandrov's heart slowed...

And faded...

And stopped.

* * *

><p><em><strong>Yes, I killed my own OC out of my own story. Hard to do, but that's just where the story needed to go, I think. Hope you enjoyed Vascha.<strong>_


	25. Retribution

_**This one went through a few rewrites. Couldn't get the rhythm right. I think I got it this time. Enjoy**_

_**Hori out.  
><strong>_

Laura could smell the remnants of burned atmosphere in the air, but she did not need her heightened olfactory senses to know that there had been an explosion on the command deck of The Ark. Alarms blared on every level, with emergency holographic images popping out of thin air in the vessel's many corridors, highlighting not only where the explosion had occurred on a three-dimensional map of the ship, but pointing out what systems were affected by the subsequent damage and system failures. Laura had been on the verge of carving her way out of the medical wing only minutes earlier when the lockdown Sinister had implemented was suddenly lifted, as was protocol in the event of a ship-wide emergency, punctuated by the rumble of a detonation several decks above her.

She did not know what would greet her when she reached the bridge, but as she raced down the corridor, flanked by several heavily armed troopers, her recently reattached arm held immobile against her body with a complicated series of straps and bandages and kinetic dampers, she felt contradictory bouts of both giddy anticipation and fear. Part of her would have liked nothing better than to see Sinister dead, but that was the irrational, hateful, animal part of her. The logical, human side of her dreaded the idea of the man as a corpse. It would mean the complete unraveling of everything she had thus far worked for, and the road she had been forced to traverse up to this point had cost her more than even she had initially been willing to bear. She would be damned if that all turned out to be for naught.

There was a sharp pain in the reconnecting flesh of her shoulder, and she bit hard on the inside of her lip to distract herself from it. There were times when her body's healing of a wound was actually more painful than the wound itself. Reattaching severed limbs generally fell into that category.

Laura felt her face contort involuntarily into a snarl as thoughts of her injury led her to thoughts of the Russian mutant. She hoped Sinister would keep her alive long enough to-

"Laura!"

Despite having her vague revenge fantasy interrupted, Laura did not turn. She knew who pursued her. She had detected them over the burning smell of explosives that thickened in the air as they approached one of the dozen doors that would grant them access to the command deck.

Hairbag, Ramrod, and Gorgeous George, each in various stages of medical care, bandages and dried blood and bruises adorning them, struggled to catch up to Laura and her cadre of troopers, limping as they came. In the case of George, she was not sure what exactly was wrong with him, or what had happened to put him in his current state, but simply put, he looked like even more of a pile of melted crap than he usually did; His limbs and features were muddy and half-formed, and he seemed to be struggling to keep himself in one piece. Laura had not even bothered to rouse them from the medical wing when she realized that someone on the bridge had gone horribly wrong, but she supposed it would be too much to hope for that they remain there while alarms blared. These three were drawn to disasters like moths to flame.

"What happened?" Ramrod asked, using his wooden pole to aid in his walking as he pressed a bandaged and slung arm to his body.

Laura pointed to one of the half-dozen holographic representations of The Ark that were being projected over various points throughout the corridor. "You've got eyes, haven't you?"

Ramrod scowled and muttered something under his breath, but did not break stride.

Laura touched a small button on the collar of her uniform, now battered and torn and blood-stained, and tried to hail Sinister again. No reply came beyond the lit hiss of static on the communicator's other end.

Two genome troopers were already at the large sliding door when they arrived. Apparently, something was impeding their entrance, perhaps a lock that had broken or been otherwise disabled in the blast, and they had slung their rifles and begun to try and force their armored fingers into the tiny crack between the door's two panels, trying to find purchase and force the mechanism to give way.

Laura growled and popped the claws in her uninjured arm.

"Get the fuck out of my way."

The two troopers glanced at her before deciding how to respond to the demand. Wisely, one immediately snapped to attention, moving himself out of her path when he spotted her adamantium claws clicking into their housings in her hand.

The other was slower to react, and Laura raised a booted foot and delivered a downward kick to the side of his helmeted and masked head, ignoring the pain that the movement sent screaming through her healing arm. It was not a blow that would injure the clone permanently, but it would perhaps teach him a lesson in obedience for the future. He was just lucky that she hadn't popped the claw in her foot.

The way now clear, she plunged the twin claws of her hand into the stubborn door and, in a matter of moments, reduced the entire issue to ribbons of metal and plastic.

Two troopers grasped the torn, jagged edges of the panels where she had removed the middle section and pulled them apart. Laura felt her stomach turn sour as she beheld what lay beyond.

The blast, whatever its origin, had been sizable. Even now she could feel warm, singed air rush out of the open door, as though she were looking into a giant's gaping maw. Almost a quarter of the bridge, consoles and seats and holographic displays and interfaces, had been reduced to twisted, blackened wraiths of the machinery they used to be. Broken glass from the numerous stations littered every surface, melted in some places from the extreme heat produced by the explosion. Everywhere, small fires still burned stubbornly even as the ship's automated fire containment system blasted the command deck yet again with a thick, white powder, attempting to smother and cool the flames. The whole room stank of charred electronics and conflagrated atmosphere and... Burnt flesh?

It took Laura a long moment, but finally, amongst the debris, she spotted a shape that might be human. She waved the troopers and the Nasty Boys in, signaling caution with silent gestures of her hand. Slowly, she made her way to the shape that lay prone and motionless amidst the smoldering debris.

It was Sinister, she ascertained that before she even knelt by the charred and smoking husk. Even in this state, the red jewel in his forehead glinted in the light. Wherever the explosion had taken place on the bridge, he must have been nearly on top of it. His whole form had the color and texture of meat that had been left too long over a fire. She could see clear through from his back to his chest where the flesh and skin and organs inside his ribcage had been obliterated in places. He was more of a sketch of a human figure than a man, a rough skeleton rendered in charcoal that still smoked and popped as it cooled.

Something caught Laura's eye, and she reached out with her good hand and gently pushed Sinister's crackling body from its position on its side onto its back. There, gleaming in the limited light of the bridge, almost defiantly, were the two claws the Russian mutant named Vascha had wielded, protruding from the scorched meat of his shoulders. Not surprisingly, the blades bore no sign at all of damage from the blast. She reached for each one in turn and pulled them out easily. She held them in her good hand, testing their weight in her palm like a medium trying to divine their origin, which, of course, she already knew. It felt strange to hold in her hand something that had once been a part of Logan's body.

Laura lifted her head and scanned the room from her crouched position. Around her, genome troopers padded cautiously across the deck, some taking up positions at various consoles that still functioned, checking on the status of this or that system, others trying to discern if a threat still existed on the bridge. George, Ramrod, and Hairbag, wandered aimlessly, gawking at the damage that had been done. She did not need to look far before she spotted what she sought.

In death, Vascha Aleksandrov's natural ability to bend and absorb light had waned considerably, and it was no longer a struggle for Laura to maintain a visual hold on the Russian mutant. It had been the feature that had made the girl a crafty opponent, if still horribly under-matched against Laura. Now, without her mutant powers, Laura got her first good look at the devilish, blade-wielding warrior. Granted, there was not much left to see anymore. Her legs splayed out at odd, broken angles, one arm was missing completely, nowhere to be found, the other was more a collection of chunks than a whole limb. Her face was still partially intact, but her oil-like hair had been burned almost completely off of her scalp. There was black blood surrounding her body in a large, still pool.

She would have been pretty, Laura realized, somehow taken off guard by that fact. The girl had a slightly boyish tinge to her features, what features had not been blasted off of her skull, but when her black skin was not lost in the inky, blurring effect of her powers, there was a delicacy and... Not beauty exactly, but a pleasing grace in her overall shape.

Her eye, the one that remained, was particularly striking. Within it were layers upon layers of silvery black rings, making it look more like the insides of a camera's zoom lens than an eyeball. Laura reasoned that the unique anatomy was probably what had allowed her to see in the darkness she constantly inhabited. It stared, unblinking and lifeless, across the room where Sinister lay.

Laura found quite suddenly that she no longer harbored a rage or bloodlust for the girl. Most obviously because she was dead, and no longer a threat to her, but also perhaps because of the sheer desperation she could see in Vascha's burnt, contorted visage. The girl had wanted to kill Sinister so badly. Laura could remember, what seemed like lifetimes ago, when she had felt anything so passionately. Had Vascha still been living, Laura would have wasted no time in dispatching her with extreme pleasure. Now? Now all that lay before her was another broken mutant corpse, like so many she'd seen before, cut down in pursuit of an impossible goal.

It was almost a disappointment that she hadn't succeeded.

Laura knelt down and lay the twin adamantium blades, their ends wrapped tightly with vibranium wire, near Vascha's body. At the worst, she had been a brave warrior. A sudden wave of shame threatened to overtake her. Shame for what she was, and how very different it was from what she had once aspired to be, but she fought it back into the pit of her stomach. She reached down and gently closed the mutant girl's remaining eye.

There was a shuffling noise like the rustling of fallen leaves behind her. Laura did not need to turn around to know what it was.

"Jesus," she heard Ramrod hiss, "Boss-man's still alive?"

"Don't sound too disappointed," Laura chided, and turning, gazed at the place where Sinister charred, obliterated corpse had begun to stir.

It was almost funny in a macabre sort of way to watch Sinister as he attempted to move, despite being little more than cooked flesh strewn over a skeleton. Funny, and rather sickening. Burned, torn strips of meat that were his muscles scraped laboriously against the ragged, dry bones as what was left of Mister Sinister attempted to lift itself from its prone position.

"Ssssss..."

For a moment, Laura did not register the noise as being separate from the harsh, dry rustling of Sinister's body. It was like the sound of a rake being drawn over loose gravel. Slowly, though, Laura realized that the noise was too deliberate, too prolonged and airy. Sinister was attempting to speak.

Quickly, she rushed to the burnt husk's side and knelt, angling her ear towards the man's charred, ruined mouth.

"Yes?" she said, "What is it?"

With any other man, Laura would have been calling for medical attention and instructing the burn victim to lie still and not strain themselves. Sinister was not any other man.

"Ssssss..." he struggled, his white teeth clenched together and clearly visible, as he no longer had lips to cover them, "Ssssstatus... Rrrrreport..."

In truth, without lips, Sinister had not been able to form the 'p' in 'report,' but Laura got the message clearly enough. She snapped her head up and barked at a nearby trooper. "I need diagnostics on all systems. Tell me what we've lost."

Turning back to Sinister, she said, "Vascha Aleksandrov is dead. There was some kind of explosion. The rest of her team has escaped to the Helicarrier, except Ciara Monetti. She made off with one of our escape pods, which was shot down by SHIELD guided missiles. The Ark's systems were searching for any signs of life when the bridge alarms went off. Our last scans showed the Helicarrier flying a perimeter around us about three miles out."

Sinister had brought himself to a seated position, but it seemed too much to demand of his body, and he let himself slide slowly to his back once again. A thin rasp that might have been a cough escaped from between his clenched teeth.

Into her collar, Laura called for a medical team to the bridge. Maybe Sinister wasn't going to bounce back from this like he always did, after all. This was about as bad as she had ever seen the man hurt before, and he had been demanding more of his healing factor in the past two hours than he usually ever did. She knew from experience that a powerful healing ability could be a hinderance as much as it could be a blessing; The extreme demands rapid healing placed on a metabolism could quickly sap energy from the rest of the body's vital systems, becoming more like an advanced form of cancer than a beneficial ability. Sinister needed to have his body's major functions kick-started again.

A trooper approached Laura and showed her a computer tablet that he carried. Laura took it, scanned the information, and grimaced, a cloud of sickness collecting in her stomach. She held the screen over Sinister's face, though she did not know if he could still see, so she read the data to him aloud.

"The blast caused a serious power failure throughout the ship. Primary systems are back online, with no major damage to The Ark's flight or defensive capabilities, but several systems that the computers deemed 'minor' were left off for several minutes before kicking on again," Laura paused, biting her lower lip, "At least thirty percent of the stasis pods were lost, along with most of our biological experiments."

Sinister's blackened face grew livid as he attempted to speak, but all the came from his throat was a series of sputtering, gagged noises. He raised a charred, skeletal hand and snatched Laura's wrist, pulling the screen down closer to his eyes as they raced over the information displayed there. Laura was surprised at how much strength still remained in him.

"Nnnnnnuke..." Sinister spat, his frustration at his body's inability to properly communicate more than apparent on his face.

"Nuclear armaments are completely offline," one of the troopers said, his voice nearly lost in the static of his respirator's filters and machinery, "Previous countdown abandoned. Missiles are in standby mode, and can no longer be fired without a full battery of diagnostics. Twelve hours at least."

That seemed too much for Sinister, who laid his head back down to the floor and closed his eyes, looking more like a burned corpse now than ever, his brow furrowing with a crackle as his breath came in thin wheezes.

Laura was herself still reeling from the news that so many stasis pods in the science wing of the ship had failed. Thirty percent was a huge sum, relatively speaking. Thousands of mutants, sleeping in suspended animation, had perished without ever knowing why, without ever being given the chance to accept Sinister's new vision of a mutant empire. Beyond being a loss of life that was both repugnant and unnecessary, it put to question whether their entire plan could ever now reach fruition. Where would they find that many mutants to replenish those that had been lost?

The medical team consisting of four genome troopers and a medbot had arrived, and after carefully lifting Sinister's body onto a gurney, during which much of his blackened musculature had simply sloughed off of his skeleton, the medical android began plugging and pasting all manner of monitoring devices into what remaining meat there was.

They seemed prepared to push the hovering gurney out of the bridge and back to the medical wing, when suddenly Sinister's hand again shot out and latched onto Laura's, which still held the computer tablet. His eyes, red and gleaming and bright, opened wide, and Laura was certain for the first time that he really could see out of them, despite the damage. He lifted her arm and, using his other hand, touched several places on the glass computer. Instantly, the data listing the status of the various ship systems melted away, replaced by a new set of data that Laura was familiar with.

_He's not going to..._

"We need..." Sinister hissed at her, each word a struggled to force out, "More mutants... Ssscare the last of them... Out of hiding... Plans change..." Then, looking back to the tablet, he touched several buttons, inputing a passcode, then said to the device, "Activate... _Tempest Protocol Mark II_..."

The tablet did little more than beep in acknowledgement, but that was all it took to signal that the order had been received, and was already being carried out by The Ark's massive communications array. No one could stop it now. The med-team pushed Sinister's gurney out of the bridge, making for the nearby lift that would take them to the medical wing.

Laura felt numb. She was not sure if she could have stopped Sinister if she had wanted to, but part of her brain screamed at her for not trying. Of course, she had known the time would come when Sinister would need to bring _Tempest_ into the picture, but she had imagined, really believed, that that day was far off into the future, and that she would be far away from Sinister and The Ark by then. Now, she would get to watch it all unfold from the best seats in the house.

_Damn it..._

A noise caught Laura's attention, and she turned. Hairbag, his nose and mouth covered with blood-stained bandages, was nevertheless sniffing and snorting around Vascha Aleksandrov's torn and ravaged corpse. With meaty, clawed hands, the feral mutant picked up one of the blades that had been the Russian mutant's weapons and licked the handle where the girl's blood had collected between the links of vibranium wire that served as a hilt.

In the span of a heartbeat, Laura had crossed the distance between them and driven her booted foot into Hairbag's guts. His breath left him with enough force that his bandages came flying off of his mouth, his eyes bugging out of his skull. He dropped the adamantium blade and clutched at his abdomen, heaving and wheezing as he dropped to his knees. With her one good arm, Laura reached down and picked up both claws, tucking them into the belt of her uniform, careful that they did not simply carve through her thigh. She took a step forward and placed herself between Hairbag and the young mutant's body.

"You will not touch her again," Laura hissed, and was shocked to find that her voice quavered slightly, her throat clenching up as she said the words.

_What is wrong with you?_ a voice in her head asked, _This girl didn't mean anything to you. You wanted to kill her, remember?_

Laura realized that Hairbag, Gorgeous George, Ramrod, and the rest of the troopers who were still going about cleaning and making preliminary repairs on the bridges systems had all stopped and were staring at her, as confused by her actions as she was. She inhaled slowly regaining control over her composure, and turned to a nearby trooper.

"I don't want her body contaminated. Sinister will still want to have a look. Get a pod team up here and shovel whats left of her into it," she said as callously as she could, then turning to another who had taken up a position by the communications array, "Get us in the air. Now. Hail the Helicarrier. Direct video link. I want to talk to them."

"Hey," George snarled, "Sinister didn't authorize that."

"Sinister is a sack of burnt meat for the time being," Laura snapped back, "So you'll fall in line or you'll answer to him when he's up again."

She took her place on the small circle that denoted the holographic field that would be recorded and projected through transmission. Instantly, it lit up as the lasers came to life, their beams dancing over her form. Frowning, Laura reached up and tore at the fasteners and devices that held her reattached arm immobile, letting them fall away. Gingerly, she uncurled the arm and tested it, flexing her fist. It was weak, but it was healing fine. She couldn't afford to appear injured.

"Sinister needs mutants," she said quietly, "There are four on that Helicarrier that will be dead in a few minutes if I can't warn them."

* * *

><p>Ben's stomach sank even further than his physical body allowed, if that was even possible, as he regarded the hazy, out-of-focus image plastered on the vid screens of the Helicarrier's bridge. Ciara's body, lifeless and contorted at grotesque angles, lay in the morning light of the New Mexico desert. They had watched as she had leapt from the crippled escape pod, tried to use a personal repulsor to slow her descent, and crashed hard into the packed earth. The entire bridge stood silent, motionless, as each technician, agent, and security officer eyed Ben and his teammates, no doubt anticipating some violent retribution for their failure to save Ciara from the half dozen missiles they had launched at her craft. Several somber minutes had passed without anyone saying more than a few words. Even General Cole had resigned himself to standing to one side, giving them some space.<p>

On any other day, they probably would have been right to expect them to lash out. In the back of his brain, Ben felt a rage, sour and hot and roiling, just waiting for any excuse to exact repayment for SHIELD's failure. But he was too tired, his nerves too ground down and fried, his muscles too sore. His bones ached, his head throbbed, and the holes in his abdomen and arm were creeping back into the forefront of his brain as Hunter's stim packs began to lose their edge. Most importantly, Ben saw no point. Despite the misinformation, the deceit, the bureaucratic sludge, despite all the factors that had been working against them, it was their own failure that had led to this. Failure to protect each other. Failure to question the information given to them, as Logan had always instructed them to do. They had been so eager, so easily swayed by the thought of revenge, that they had allowed themselves to be dropped into a situation essentially handcuffed and blindfolded. It was their own damn fault.

Ben was vaguely aware of his legs giving way, falling to his knees, his arms limp at his sides as he stared at the image of Ciara's body, still and motionless, a barely discernible color change appearing as a dark pool of blood began to collect around her head.

"Ciara..." he whispered, his voice quavering, "No..."

"She's dead," Rin said, unable to see the image produced in the hologram, her usually steady and calm voice quavering, her milky eyes shiny and wrapped in tears, "Isn't she?"

"Sir," a nearby technician turned and faced General Cole, "I'm getting reports that there was an explosion detected onboard The Ark, near the bridge area. It occurred not long after the escape pod was launched."

"Aleksandrov," Cole frowned, lowering his head and rubbing his temples, "Have we heard from her?"

"No, sir," another tech said, wiping sweat from her brow and covering her mouth to hold in a slight cough "But given her last known trajectory, in addition to the odds she would have faced, it is not outside of protocol to assume..."

The technician trailed off as he turned his head slightly to look at the remaining members of the Sons of Logan, wary of upsetting them.

"To assume she's dead too," Ben finished, the words carrying strangely little weight as he hauled himself back onto his feet, feeling Hunter put a hand under his arm to assist him. He felt light, as though he could be knocked over with a feather. His mind, his body, his_ soul_ had become numb and vaporous.

"So what now?" Hunter asked, he face hard and contorted, "How do we get back in there? We don't know for sure that Vascha is gone! Ciara could still be alive!"

"I'm afraid your participation in this mission has come to an end," General Cole said, though with considerably less satisfaction in his voice than Ben might have anticipated, "This is a SHIELD operation now. We'll open up a channel to Sinister, try and renegotiate with him while we try to evacuate the nearby areas that are most densely populated."

"Negotiate?" Gansükh echoed, incredulous, "You're kidding right? This is the same guy who wasted your entire science division because he felt like it, remember?"

"Be that as it may," Agent Travis stepped forward, attempting to re-engage his gloss of military poise and detachment, and only just succeeding, "Sinister is a cold, calculating son of a bitch, not a sociopathic mass murderer. We can still bank on the idea that he might at least speak with us. Any delay of whatever he's planning in retribution, be it a nuclear strike or something else, will be invaluable."

"For your service, and for your loss," Cole said, "I'll still move forward with the purging of your and your family's records. You can all go home," The General turned towards the array of instruments and holograms before him, the frown etched into his face deep and unwavering. "You have my sympathies."

Agent Travis gestured towards the entrance to the bridge from which they had come, and began motioning them toward it like a theater usher.

"We don't want your sympathy."

In the years that Ben had known Rin, he had heard her yell several times, of that he was certain. Over the din of battle, in moments of danger, she had raised her voice in anger, and in fear. But there was something about they way she spoke now that gave each and every person on the Helicarrier's bridge pause. There was a naked strength in her voice that Ben had never heard her use.

"We don't want your sympathy," she repeated, "We don't want your pity or your scorn or your fear or your friendship or your kindness. We don't even want your respect. All we ever wanted, all we ever dared to even wish for, was to be left alone."

"Agent Travis," Cole said quietly, "Please have security escort them to their quarters."

"Men like you!" Rin pointed at Cole, forgetting her usual calm, demure demeanor, or just not caring anymore, "Who have used mutants up like fodder and driven us out of our own lives, this is your fault! You begrudge us, you mistrust us, but when the need arises, you bite your tongue and watch children fling themselves at the walls of your enemies, just as you watched the X-Men do the same. And when we have been beaten and driven back, you brush us aside like falling leaves!"

Ben felt the rough hands of a SHIELD officer grip him around the shoulders. All around him, his teammates were receiving the same treatment. It would probably not take much for from Rin to get them to attempt to slap more restraining collar around their necks, but what did it matter anymore? Like Rin said, they had been beaten. Fighting more of SHIELD's thugs wouldn't change that.

"Agent Travis!" Cole barked, his face reddening slightly, his fist coming to his mouth to stifle a cough, "I want them out of here, now!"

_This is going to get out of hand really fast_, Ben thought mildly, his weary mind unable to form enough reasons to care.

"Sir!" a technician said, turning to Cole and shedding the instruments he wore of his eyes and ears, "Transmission incoming from The Ark!"

The whole bridge seemed to freeze for a moment, and then just like that, Ben and his teammates were all but forgotten as the command deck was suddenly a chaos of orders and counter-orders and protocols and data being thrown about by nearly every person in possession of a mouth.

It suddenly occurred to Ben that, beyond the shout and yells that permeated the air around him, something else was happening. Something odd. Almost a quarter of the officers and technicians on the deck were covering their mouths, holding in coughing fits with every other word spoken.

_World's fastest cold bug?_ It didn't seem likely.

General Cole was the loudest, his voice booming even as he shrugged off another coughing fit. "I want validation of the frequency and a tracing program on right now," he snapped, "I want a firewall on our firewalls. Make sure they're not trying to sneak anything through. Break open our worm programs and see if we can't piggy-back them on the data stream. It's not every day Sinister calls us up, ladies, I want eyes and ears on everything. Find me a way into his system."

"It's not Sinister," Gansükh said, pointing at the holographic image that had began to construct itself in the air at the center of the bridge, "It's X-23."

It was harder for Ben to see her for a moment in the half-formed image, but he was sure that Gansükh was right. It was difficult to image any other brunette clad in tight, form-fitting body armor that might be hailing to Helicarrier. The lasers finished their work, and the woman's face was fully-rendered, cold and frowning.

"Where is Sinister?" Cole asked, crossing his arms, dubious of the new face that he had not expected.

"Are the Sons of Logan present?" X-23 asked, ignoring the General.

Cole looked around, confused for a moment, "Is our audio on?"

"I can hear you fine," the brunette snarled, "And I know you can hear me. So answer my question."

"We're here," Hunter said, "You murdering, heartless, bit-"

"That's enough," Cole snapped, his face red and beading with sweat, "You're no longer a part of this operation!"

"Oh," X-23 smiled, finally acknowledging the General as he covered his mouth with an arm, muffling his hacking and coughing, "See, that's where you're wrong."

X-23 reached out of view of the holographic emitters, so that one of her hands momentarily disappeared. For a moment, Ben had been stunned to see that she had two arms at all, but then remembered that this woman was an incomplete clone of Logan, with all the healing benefits that came with that. Still, to have reattached a whole arm in so little time was impressive, even by those standards. X-23's arm returned into view, clutching a data tablet. She began to browse the information on it as she spoke.

"As far as SHIELD and other similar organizations worldwide are aware, the virus known as Ominous is a mutation of the Terminus virus, which affected _homo sapiens superior_ exclusively. According to their studies, it affects roughly one out of every ten thousand humans, is not considered airborne, and has no symptoms other than the slow degradation of the host's ability to reproduce."

Ben and Gansükh glanced at each other, their faces both asking the same silent question: _What's her point?_

"In reality," X-23 continued, letting the arm holding the tablet drop to her side, "Ominous has infected nearly fifty percent of the entire human population across the globe."

"That's not possible," General Cole snorted.

"Is it?" Ben asked quietly, nudging Agent Travis lightly on the shoulder. When he did not respond, Ben looked away from the hologram of X-23 to look at him. Agent Travis' face was a mask of fear, his features ghost-white, his jaw slightly agape as he processed the information that X-23 had offered.

_He certainly seems to think so._

X-23 continued, ignoring Cole's interruption. "In truth, Ominous is a more advanced, perfected version of the Terminus strain. It can show up on certain tests and screens, but the frequency with which this happens is far lower than the actual prevalence of the virus. Simply put, the humans didn't know what to look for.

"And while it is certainly true that the virus is not airborne and cannot transfer as easily as its cousin, Terminus, it does have an affect a little more... rousing than simple sterilization. You see, the Ominous strain attaches itself not only to the reproductive organs, but also to key locations in the brain that help oversee a whole variety of necessary systems, like breathing, motor functions, behavior, and hormonal regulation. In its natural state, Ominous doesn't actually do anything to these areas. It simply sits there and waits for outside stimulation."

Suddenly, the image of X-23 dissipated, replaced by a wire-frame rendering of The Ark that rotated and highlighted itself in certain areas as X-23 continued to speak.

"When Ominous was designed, it was given an added feature that Terminus did not possess; The virus itself is sensitive to a very specific frequency that can only be transmitted by a very powerful senor array, like the one we have here on The Ark. We can transmit this signal to project from any device in our range with an audio output. When it detects that frequency, Ominous goes into a feeding frenzy. Rather than the slow, methodical process of replacing tissue with cancerous cells, it simply chews through them. This usually manifests first in an increase in blood pressure, the urge to cough, sweating, tremors in the extremities, and so fourth. Within several minutes, however, the infected human will experience full-blown violent psychosis, punctuated by enhancements in strength and downgrades in intelligence."

The image of X-23 reappeared, her face softened somewhat by a slight frown.

"I'm telling this to you, Sons of Logan, because, even after all of this day's events, you are needed in the coming dawn of mutant kind. But for that to happen, you'll need to get off of that Helicarrier alive."

X-23 looked down at the tablet, making note of the the time.

"I'm tell this to you, Sons of Logan, because we began transmitting the frequency three minutes ago. In less than two, half the people on that ship will be killing the other half. I suggest you get moving."

The hologram went dead.

"We need to go," Travis hissed, grabbing Ben and Hunter by the shoulders and attempting to pull them towards the exit, "We need to go right now!"

"What do you know about this, Agent Travis?" General Cole called from across the bridge, his face red and puffy, his eyes watering.

"I know you're infected with Ominous," Travis said, "And I know you need to let these kids go. Now."

There was a long pause, broken up only by random fits of coughing throughout the bridge. All around him, Ben could see panic in people's faces.

"Security..." Cole began, but suddenly a fit of coughing overtook him. In fact, every other person on the bridge was coughing, including three of the four guards who had blocked the door. The fourth stepped forward, about to put his hands on Travis' shoulders, but the SHIELD agent batted his away, put a leg behind the guard's and pushed him aside handily, sending him cartwheeling awkwardly to the floor.

"What's going on, here?" Gansükh asked, as baffled by the sudden turn of events as any of them, "Travis, did you know about this?"

_Yes,_ Ben realized, remembered the grim horror he'd seen on the agent's face, _Yes he did._

"I think you're going to find that this is a conversation you'd rather have elsewhere," Travis said, producing his repulsor pistol from its holster under his arm and sweeping the bridge with it. Without looking, he slapped a pad by the door and did not turn as it slid open.

A SHIELD officer, his face bloated red and a thick white foam bubbling from his mouth, leapt from the other side of the opening door, landing on Travis' back. Travis cried out, reaching back to grab at the man who beat at his back and neck and head with balled fists, like a creature in a frenzy. Before Travis could get to him, Hunter's fists glowed blue, and a hammer of dense air pushed the officer off, sending him sprawling into a console.

All around him, Ben could see the anarchy that was beginning to unfold, even if he did not fully understand it. Half of the people on the bridge were wracked with agony and fits of coughing and vomiting, and the other half were rushing to their sides to assist them, or at the very least stay out of the way. Quickly though, the coughing fits turned into more than that. On the far side of the deck, a man picked up his tablet and bashed a nearby officer in the face with it, his movement jerky and awkward, his breathing ragged and clogged with spittle. Nearby, a technician had begun beating on his terminal with his bare fists, shrieking at it through his teeth, red with blood from where he had already bitten his tongue. Near the communication array, Ben could see General Cole, his face purple and bulging with veins as he held his arms over his stomach, as though some creature were trying to claw its way out of him, and his sheer force of will was all that kept it at bay. A SHIELD medic came to his side and began to take his pulse. Without any warning, Cole turned to the woman, wrapped his hands around her neck and began to squeeze.

"What's happening?" Ben shouted over the growing din of coughing and screaming, aware that X-23 had said in plain English exactly what was happening. He just didn't want to believe it.

"They're going insane," Travis said grimly, "Ominous is eating through their brains."

Another SHIELD officer spotted Ben, and began to shamble towards him with jilted, awkward steps. He reached out to him, his hands clubbed and gnarled. Travis pointed his pistol and shot the man in the head.

"We need to move," Travis hissed, "Right now."


	26. Broken Shield

Where once the Helicarrier had been as quiet and efficient as as good soldier, every person and piece of machinery acting in congruence with a greater purpose, its hallways pristine and hard, it's people even more so, it had degraded into a full-blown disaster in less than ten minutes. While their progress to one of the airship's hangars had been relatively unimpeded after they had vacated the madness that the command deck had spiraled into, with every passing second it became more and more apparent that X-23 was correct in her assertion: Half of the crew of the Helicarrier was killing the other half, and the ship would most definitely go down.

Gansükh squinted in the rapidly-changing light of the hallway, caused by the flashing of emergency lighting that led the way through the ship towards escape pods. Travis led them, proceeding in a recognizably military-style gait; crouched low, his repulsor pistol at the ready, scanning for threats. It was a physical state of efficiency and alertness that Gansükh would not have originally thought the SHIELD agent would possess. The man was obviously quite intelligent, tactful, and sly, as would be expected from a member of a spy agency, but Gansükh would have never previously guessed him for any kind of combat veteran. Travis had struck him as a bit of a pencil-pusher, not an operative. His opinion on that was rapidly changing. In fact, this sudden transformation as well as Travis' words in the bridge had left Gansükh with the tart flavor of unease in on the back of his tongue.

It was somewhat ironic; The more they had come to need Agent Travis, the less he trusted him. The current situation did not rely on trust, however. It relied on them getting to a shuttle or escape pod as quickly as humanly possible. A feat that was seeming more and more impossible with every second that ticked by.

At first the corridors of the Helicarrier had seemed unusually deserted, hauntingly so as the ship's alarms blared out a chorus of emergency. That had changed quickly, however, and now they could not run more than a few paces without a doorway sliding open, and hell itself pouring out in the form of humans, bleeding and screaming and clawing at each other and themselves.

"Help me! Oh god, please help!" a woman cried out, reaching for Gansükh's boot as he passed, a technician, red-faced and foaming, grinning maniacally as he jammed one of his thumbs into her eye socket. The woman's cries for help transformed into unintelligible wails of agony. For a moment, Gansükh faltered, almost turned back, but he felt Travis' fingers hook around his arm and jerk him roughly.

"Leave them!" the SHIELD agent hissed, "If we stop, we die!"

"If we get out of this alive," Hunter shouted over the din of the alarms, "I have a lot of questions for you, Agent Travis!"

If Travis had intended to reply, they would never know. As they turned the corner, their boots collectively shrieked as they skidded to a halt.

"You were saying something about stopping?" Rin said cooly.

Before them was a scene out of an old horror vid. The hallway Travis had meant to lead them through, wide as it was, was packed nearly floor to ceiling with human suffering the likes of which Gansükh had never expected to see anywhere outside of the most war-torn hellholes in the world. Infected men and women, their brains chewed into by the Ominous virus, were quite literally tearing their crew mates apart. Where once the walls and floors had been a dull, semi-reflective grey, they were now smeared in dark red sprays and splatters, body parts of all shapes and sizes littered the ground. The screams of both the infected and non-infected alike came in grisly waves.

It did not take more than a second for the nearest Ominous-infected SHEILD technician to lift his gaze from the violence he was inflicting upon his crew mate. His eyes were at the same time alert and vacant, like a crow or a shark. There was very little there that was human anymore. The man absently wiped his mouth, thick with foam stained pink with blood, and let his jaw hang open, a long string of drool hanging from one lip.

Quickly, they found themselves under the attention of more and more infected SHEILD agents. One made a long, low groaning noise, and began to shuffle towards them. While their fine motor skills seemed to have been diminished, Gansükh had already seen enough of the infected's explosive speed to dismiss the shambling wretches as anything less than dangerous.

"Where do we need to go, Travis?" he asked in a half whisper, placing a hand on his own pistol that sat in its holster.

"Straight down," Travis said, readying his own weapon, "The big doors at the end of the hall lead to the hangar. I have a shuttle prepared."

Gansükh wanted to ask why exactly Travis would think to have a shuttle 'prepared' for this sort of event, but this was not the time. He silently filed the question away in his mental folder of things that just didn't line up with Agent Travis.

"Okay," Hunter snarled, his hands glowing their signature blue, "I'll punch a hole through them, you guys-"

The ship lurched suddenly, whatever programming that kept the craft level spiraling wildly out of control without the Helicarrier's crew maintaining the precarious physics of the operation. Gansükh grabbed onto a nearby door frame to steady himself, and for a moment it seemed as though the slight hiccup in the ship's flight path would subside. All at once, the very frame of the massive craft seemed to shudder, and Gansükh felt the floor fall away from under his feet, and his stomach leapt into his throat.

The entire port side of the Helicarrier had dipped almost forty-five degrees, and what was once a hallway had become a ramp. The door frame that Gansükh had grasped was fine for a momentary hand hold, but did not have ample surface area for him to support his entire weight, and soon he was tumbling, sliding, and falling backwards down the corridor, in exactly the opposite direction they needed to be headed in. For half an instant, he and Ben became a tangle of limbs as they fought to stay properly oriented. All of this took a backseat, however, to the fact that, following in their crashing descent down the hallway were at least two dozen ominous-infected humans.

Gansükh crossed his arms in front of his face and over his head, closing his eyes, bracing himself for the incoming impact of his body against the doorway at the far end. It never came. He was suddenly aware of a sudden burst of wind in the cramped space. He opened his eyes and saw his surroundings obscured by a blue glow.

"Hold on!" he heard Hunter growl.

As though someone had strapped a rocket to his back, Gansükh felt his body propelled upwards at a dizzying rate, jolting his senses. Around him, Rin, Ben, and Travis were being similarly flung upwards on a plane of air. Slightly above them, Hunter had his hands pushed out in front of his body their blue glow so bright it was almost blinding. The mass of infected humans and blood and body parts were pushed aside by a glowing blade of pure atmosphere, shoving them forcibly against the walls with such strength that Gansükh could hear the wet slaps of flesh and meat hitting the metal paneling. One infected SHEILD technician managed to grab a hold of Ben's leg, but Gansükh reached out with both hands and snapped the man's wrist in one smooth movement, and the wraith of a man fell away with the others.

"How thick are the doors?" Hunter shouted above the racket of wind whipping through the confined space, "Travis! How thick?"

"Too much for you to blast through!" came the reply.

Hunter nodded. "Rin!" he called out to the blind Japanese girl.

Rin did not need any further instruction. There was the characteristic whisper of her katana sliding from its scabbard, and Gansükh watched as Hunter reached back with a glowing fist and flung her ahead of them at blinding speed.

Gansükh covered his ears, but even his palms mashed against the side of his head could not keep out the deafening noise as Rin opened her throat and let loose her supersonic shriek. The large doors at the end of the hall, which had now become the top of a long shaft as the ship continued to veer dangerously to one side, buckled and cracked under the pressure of her wail, the sound bouncing off and returning to them with such force that Gansükh could see Hunter struggle to maintain their upward momentum. Hunter had thrown Rin forward with expert precision, and she reached the apex of her flight just beneath the ravaged doors. Before she began to fall backwards again, the small girl made two expert cuts in key points on the door's frame.

Hunter caught her in a cushion of air before she could fall more than a dozen feet, and with one last push, blew the broken door off of its hinges, propelling them forward into the darkness of the hangar beyond.

As if on cue, the ship lurched again, and the starboard side dipped with so much speed that Hunter did not have time to compensate, and the ceiling of the hangar rushed down and slapped them out of the air like a giant's hand. Hunter still managed to save their landing, and Gansükh was able hit the floor with enough control to tuck and roll without injuring himself.

The hangar that Travis had led them to was not the main hangar of the ship, which was nearly the size of a large building and sat in the belly of the craft. This seemed to be a smaller auxiliary unit for personal aircraft and escape pods. The far wall was of a similar design to the main hangar, though; It was entirely open to the sky, covered only by a shimmering, semi-transparent kinetic barrier. Thankfully, it seemed to be used so infrequently that the ships themselves and the majority of the equipment had been fastened securely to the bulkhead, and no SHIELD technicians, infected or otherwise, could be seen.

"There," Travis pointed to the far end of the hangar. A small aircraft sat, its stout wings folded against its slick, metallic body, large kinetic dampers clamped to key areas to keep it from moving or shifting. It was only slightly larger than an average automobile, and would barely fit all of them, but Gansükh supposed they could not afford to be picky.

He reached down and put an arm under Ben's.

"You okay?" he asked. Ben had become increasingly quiet and subdued as they had made their way through the Helicarrier. Gansükh knew the reason, of course; The boy had more wounds in his body than any of them, and being disconnected from the ground was akin to being repeatedly kicked in the stomach for him.

Ben's reply came not in the form of any words that Gansükh could discern. He simply grunted and patted Gansükh thankfully on the back. Rin rushed to their side and assisted. Between them, Ben let his head drop and barely had the strength to keep his footing as they moved toward the small aircraft that Travis had already begun prepping.

_Where is..?_

Gansükh turned and saw Hunter, grimly staring down the hallway they had come from, his fists balled and glowing blue.

"Hunter!" he called, "Come on!"

The thickly muscled teenager snapped his head in their direction, as though he'd forgotten they were there. He worked his jaw and returned his gaze intently to the ruined doorway.

"They're coming," he replied, "Go."

As soon as the words had left his mouth, Gansükh heard a smacking noise, and saw a pair of blood-soaked hands grasping the hangar's shattered doorframe. Without missing a beat, Hunter wound up like a baseball pitcher and sent a bolt of blue air streaking into the passage, followed by a cacophony of angry, unintelligible cries.

"Take him," Gansükh told Rin, shrugging Ben's weight onto her small but capable frame, "Get on board."

"What are you doing?" Gansükh hissed as he jogged towards Hunter, who wounds up another volley of weaponized air current. Down the hallway, he could see that, where once there had been maybe two dozen infected humans, their numbers had doubled. Apparently the wretches were drawn to violence.

"On a craft that small," Hunter frowned, "Even if one or two of them latch on the outside, we'll never get out of here. Get on the shuttle, Gan. I've got this."

_I've heard words like that already today._

Gansükh reached out and touched the larger boy's shoulder. Hunter turned to look at him. There was pain in his eyes, Gansükh could see. Pain and frustration and anger. A bad mixture in combat situations.

"I don't need anymore dead friends today, Hunter."

"Neither do I," Hunter looked back down the hallway, "That's why I have to do this."

Abruptly, Hunter cracked what looked like a smile, but with too much teeth. It was somewhere between a grin and a scowl, and had equal amounts of levity and wrath.

"Come on, man," he said, "There's no way I'm biting it today. We've got a whole laundry list of people that we need to kill now. Vascha and Ciara wouldn't let me live it down."

There was a collective cry from the doorway, and the two boys turned. It seemed that Hunter's air blades were doing very little to deter the spirit of the growing horde of infected humans. Hunter lifted a glowing blue hand in their direction.

Somewhere far away and below them, there was a deep rumbling, carried through the decks of the Helicarrier in a shock wave that rattled their knees.

Hunter and Gansükh looked at each other, and both began speaking at the same time.

"That didn't sound goo-"

There was another tremor through the bulkheads, followed by a flickering in the lights above their heads. Instantly, Hunter's head darted towards the kinetic shields that kept the small hangar closed from the open sky outside.

"What?" Gansükh asked.

"If those shields give out, we'll-"

An alarm sounded, and red lights installed and regular intervals along the perimeter of the hangar's kinetic door began to flash bright red. From the far end of the room came a mechanical whine as Travis' small ship unfolded its wings like a huge silvery insect, its repulsor engines glowing red at their exhaust ports.

There was the sudden scratching, chattering noise of a public address system being turned on, and abruptly they could hear Travis' voice projected from hidden speakers in the corners of the room.

"The power is going!" the SHIELD agent shouted, "Get your asses in here!"

Gansükh grabbed Hunter's arm and made to forcibly pull him if he would not be verbally persuaded to join him on the shuttle. The threat of the infected humans was palpable, that was true, but being blown out of the hangar was a far more prevalent danger. He took half a step toward the far end of the hangar, felt another shudder in his knees, saw the lights overhead flicker and die, and watched the shimmering kinetic barrier begin to shut down, revealing blue sky on the other side.

_Oh shit._

At the end of that day, Gansükh would be thankful for two things: First was the material of the CHB harness. Without its battery, it was little more than a collection of wires and canvas and sturdy kevlar, but still served to function as well as any other similarly-designed utility belt. Secondly was Hunter's reflexes. Before Gansükh could form a reaction, he felt Hunter's arms hook through the back loop of the harness quick as a snake. Almost as soon as he had, the outside and interior air pressure equalized with a deafening snap, and everything that was not bolted to the ground was swept up in a maelstrom of wind, including Hunter and Gansükh.

Gansükh had braced himself to be thrown out into the open sky with all of the other loose odds and ends of the hangar, but was surprised when his feet remained planted firmly on the ground. Looking down, he saw the air around his feet glowed blue. If Hunter had not acted so quickly, he would now be free-falling to his certain death.

"Brace yourself!" Hunter shouted.

"Hurry!" Travis shrieked over the P.A. System.

"Ready!" Gansükh crossed his arms over his chest and ducked his head down.

The flight was the most violent that Gansükh had ever experienced at the hands of Hunter's powers, but Hunter was fighting cross-winds the likes of which he'd probably never had to contend with in such a small space. Gansükh felt his muscles strain and crackle as the g-force of Hunter's wind threw them to the far end of the hangar like a shot out of a gun, and he knew that if he lived out the next few minutes, his neck and shoulders would be abhorrently sore later. He thought for a moment that they might overshoot their target, but no sooner had the though crossed his mind did Hunter hit the brakes in a swirl of blue air and rocket them into the rear of the craft, which opened into a sort of ramp. The two boys tumbled into the sparsely padded, cramped compartment at the rear of the shuttle, bumping heads, elbows, and knees and roughly crashing over one another.

The ramp clamped shut with a metallic clang, and there was a hiss of air as the pressure equalized.

"Punch it!" Hunter yelled even as he dragged himself into a seat.

Gansükh followed suit, reaching up and pulling himself into a chair that was little more than a collection of bent steel rods with thin padding on the back. He looked up to find a harness, reaching into the air above his head, when his eyes caught something that stopped him short.

_That's Vascha's bag._

He looked again. There could be no doubt. Vascha's military-style duffle bag was neatly secured into the baggage compartment over his head. Next to it was his own. In fact, all of the possessions that the team had not brought on the mission had been packed away on this shuttle craft. Not only had Travis anticipated needing a swift escape from the Helicarrier, he had counted on bringing them with him.

Gansükh wanted to say something, but decided to keep the question, along with many others, to himself for the time being. There would be plenty of opportunity to interrogate the SHEILD agent later.

The shuttle lurched, and Gansükh felt the repulsor engines give out their characteristic vibrating hum. He reached up, grabbed onto his harness, and jerked it down over his chest, clicking it onto the fastener between his legs. He felt his weight thrown to one side as Travis hit the thruster and the craft slid down the rails and out into the open air. There was a terrifying moment as the craft slipped into free fall, but the repulsors quickly shifted and provided the upward lift to keep them aloft.

Gansükh gazed out of a small window in the bulkhead of the craft and was struck by how close the ground was. He could make out the small details of the landscape below with alarming clarity. Another two minutes in the ship and they would have gone down with it.

"Can I throw up now?" Ben asked groggily from his own seat next to Rin, "I've been doing my best not to, and I'd like to know if I can now."

Hunter let out a long, exhausted sigh. "I think you're good now, Ben. Go ahead."

"So where are we going, anyway?" Gansükh called up to the tiny cockpit where Travis was busying himself at the controls.

"I told you before," Travis said, glancing back, "There's one person that can help us take down Sinister."

"Yeah," Hunter said, "Professor Xavier. You mentioned that. You do know he's dead, right? Like, very dead?"

"I'm aware," Travis looked back at his instruments, "But there are one or two secrets that the X-Men lost in the chaos of the human-mutant conflict. Before he died, Charles Xavier-"

There was a loud thump above their heads, and Gansükh could almost feel his heart sink.

"Shit," Travis snarled as the shuttle suddenly dipped to one side, "He's on the main repulsor intake."

They did not need to ask who 'he' was. What Hunter had feared and attempted to prevent had happened. An infected SHIELD technician had somehow managed to grab ahold of their craft as they had exited the hangar.

The shuttle dipped again and shook noticeably. Gansükh and Hunter met each other's eyes and nodded.

"We need to get out there and-"

"Oh fuck, hold on!" Travis put both hands on the control stick of the shuttle, bracing himself against it, "He's going to get sucked into the-"

An explosion of orange flame tore through one side of the cabin followed by a screech of twisting metal and ripping machinery, and Gansükh squinted as sunlight poured through the hole where one section of the shuttle's roof had been only seconds before. Smoke poured in and hit him full in the face, choking him and burning the inside of his nose. He felt his body being flung against his harness as the shuttle curled into a wild, spiraling dive. Next to him, he saw Hunter's eyes squeezed shut, blood flowing freely from a wound in his head where a shard of jagged steel had raked his scalp.

Across from him he could see Rin shouting something to him, but with the hole punched in the shuttle's hull, all he could hear was the turbulence of the wind whipping across the craft and the scream of the mangled repulsor engine.

_Not like this,_ Gansükh grimaced, _We aren't going out like this._

Through the small window, he could see nothing but the expanse of the desert. The sky was gone, and only the ground rushed towards them at a horrible speed. Travis was cursing his control panel as he wrestled with the flight stick.

Something caught his eye, and he turned back to face Rin and Ben, still seated across from him. Ben was waving at him, trying to get his attention. He pointed at the window that Gansuukh had been looking out of, and shouted something.

"What?" Gansükh replied.

Ben rolled his eyes, heavy with exhaustion, and cupped his hands around his mouth.

"Tell! Me! When!"

At first Gansükh did not understand, but it quickly dawned on him, and he craned his neck to look out of the small porthole. The ground was getting very close. He didn't know how effective Ben's manipulation of the earth would be when he wasn't touching it. Frankly, he'd never seen him try before.

He looked at Ben and raised his hands, showing all ten fingers.

_Ten seconds._

He began counting down as he looked out of the small opening. He was doing little more than guessing. If Travis could have heard him, he would have simply asked for the SHIELD agent for a readout of the altimeter, but he was hunched over his console, desperately wrestling with the stick to keep their descent semi-controlled. He was doing a better job than Gansükh would have given him credit for.

_Five Seconds._

Ben's eyes began to roll into the back of his head, his body went limp, and he held his hands out in front of him in a gesture of concentration. Below, through the limited view he was afforded, Gansükh could swear that he could see the ground... shifting, softening. But he did not even dare to hope.

_We are _not_ going out like this!_

The engines cut out entirely, and an eerie near-silence overcame the craft, punctuated only by the occasional whipping of the wind against it.

"Brace yourselves!" Travis cried out.

"Now, Ben!" Gansükh shouted.

The small shuttle crashed into the earth. Everything went black.

* * *

><p>Laura watched the Helicarrier with a cool, detached expression as the massive airship slowly plummeted out of the morning desert sky. Unlike The Ark, the Helicarrier required constant attention and human supervision to maintain its flight. Without that, the ship was doomed, and she had tracked its inevitable descent from the sky without remark. She did not know if the surviving members of the Sons of Logan had escaped, but she was optimistic. They were, after all, survivors trained by the very best. And with the loss of so many mutant specimens aboard The Ark, they had become more valuable than she had ever imagined. There was of course the question of where they would go now if they had indeed made it out of SHIELD's command ship alive, but there were only so many places that mutants stranded in the desolation of the former United States <em>could<em> go. Laura had a very distinct feeling that she had not seen the last of them.

She squinted slightly as the nose of the Helicarrier crashed soundlessly into the New Mexico desert, a fireball erupting from its belly and reaching several hundred feet into the sky. The view screen compensated for the bright light and polarized the image, darkening it to a comfortable viewing level.

_The reactors will go soon._

As though some god of destruction had read her thoughts, a second explosion, this one many times larger than the first, tore through the airship, ripping it nearly in half as it's nuclear power sources went critical. Even at a distance of several miles, Laura braced herself against the railing of the command deck. Sure enough, after several moments, the blast wave hit the broad side of The Ark. It would not cause any damage, of course, but several troopers who had not thought to steady themselves reeled as their ship pitched to one side from the impact.

Laura regarded the smoking, burning ruin on his view screen for a long moment before switching it off. She had hated SHIELD and everything it represented for decades. Now, the very thing that represented the organization's strength and reach, indeed, perhaps the most important and most critical element of the organization itself was nothing more than twisted, flaming wreckage. SHIELD itself would almost certainly follow.

_So why don't I feel happier?_

"Good riddance," she heard George snort behind her, "Flatscan bastards."

Laura turned to face George and the other two Nasty Boys. Hairbag seemed not to be able to meet her gaze, apparently still sour from the kick she had dealt him to his midsection. George and Ramrod looked at her expectantly.

"Reckon we'll send the drones to mop up, eh?" Ramrod mused, still watching the Helicarrier burn with glee on his own screen.

"No," Laura said mildly, "They're dead. We don't need to waste the fuel or the ordinance."

"Dead with the exception of Logan's little zealots, you mean," George frowned, his face contorting the expression like a funhouse mirror, "What was the point of warning' em about Ominous, love?"

"Yeah," Ramrod agreed, "I mean, I don't pretend to understand the finer details of what you and Sinister hatch up when you have your little group sessions, but that seems a bit... Counter-intuitive? Were we not trying to murder those little bastards not two hours ago?"

Laura shrugged, "Plans change. Priorities were rearranged. Mutants of any kind just became a valuable commodity."

She turned, made several gestures in the air in front of her, and a suite of ship controls and readouts sprang to life at her fingertips. Involuntarily, she felt her face contort into a grimace, a combination of anger and fatigue and concentration. Her words had been a gross understatement. Nothing had gone the way it was supposed to ever since Logan's disciples had shown up. While she had never for a moment expected that Sinister's demands would be met without difficulty, the damage caused by the Sons of Logan had made necessary an acceleration of not only Sinister's plans, but her own as well. Ominous was not supposed to have entered _Tempest_ stage until The Ark was fully in their control and Terminus had been dealt with. Even then, the self-sustaining nature of The Ark and the number of mutant specimens they had amassed would have made Ominous something of a moot point. But now, as Sinister had said, even in his burnt, husk-like form, they needed mutants. And they needed them badly.

There was only one place in the world that Laura knew of where the world's last remaining mutants still gathered _en masse_.

Laura glanced at the trooper who had taken the helm of The Ark, only casually noticing the huge smear of darkening blood where there had previously been a decapitated soldier manning the station.

"Get us in the air," she said, "Get cloaking systems online and plot a northeastern course."

As an afterthought, Laura added: "And don't stop transmitting the _Tempest_ frequency. I want every infected human within a twelve mile radius foaming at the mouth and ripping his own eyes out wherever we go. Get to work hacking any communication satellites that come within our range and start relaying that macabre vid that Sinister had made for the occasion. Just like we planned. I want the whole goddamn world to know what's going on now."

A trooper by the communications array console nodded curtly as his gloved and armored fingers danced over the holographic interface.

"It's really starting?"

Laura turned and cocked an eyebrow at Ramrod. It was not his questioning that caught her off-guard. It was the tone of his voice. There was awe there. Confusion. Maybe even a little bit of fear. He shifted his weight uncomfortably. George and Hairbag were characteristically unreadable and silent, but they were similarly visibly nonplussed by the situation.

"What do you mean?" she asked, "This is everything we've been working towards."

"Yeah, of course," Ramrod scratched the back of his head, "But I mean... Killing a few people, that's all in good fun. But... Are we really going to kill all of the humans? Like, _all_ of them?"

In spite of herself, Laura chuckled. It was a humorless, dry noise that sounded alien even to herself.

"If everything goes to plan, boys, they're going to kill themselves," she turned to look out of the huge viewscreen that offered a panoramic view of the New Mexico desert, scared by the thick, black plume of smoke climbing into the sky from the ruined hulk that was once the seat of SHEILD's power.

"Let's get out of here," she said, placing her hands on the control panels of the command deck, "The future is waiting for us."

_More importantly,_ she thought, My_ future is waiting for _me.

The Ark, impossibly massive in its scale, slowly crept upward into the sky, it's surface reflecting a veritable kaleidoscope of color as the sun danced off of its hull, the unnatural metallic purple shimmering like gasoline in water. It's repulsor engines, large enough to fit a house inside of their intakes without breaking a sweat, thundered and crackled as they pushed the tens of thousands of tons into the Earth's upper atmosphere. Slowly, though, sections of it seemed to disappear from sight, as though passing behind some invisible veil that had been suspended from the clouds. Within moments, all that was left was a vague glimmer of light in the bright blue sky. And soon even that was gone.


	27. Epilogue

_"Mutants of the world, it is time to take back what was stolen from us._

_"For years, decades, you have seen our race reduced to mere handfuls, garrisoned into death camps or forced into hiding, unable to breed, unable to find solace or happiness. Where once we were strong, we are now little more than a footnote in the annals of human history. A plague stole our future, and humans have stolen our present and cast aside our past. You watch in horror as your children starve, as your friends are barred from basic human rights and dignities, as entire nations deride us as criminals and pariahs, when our only transgression was simply being born different._

_"I tell you now what many of you had long suspected: The disease that plagues your bodies, that renders our men and women infertile, the abomination known as Terminus, was made by the hands of men. Government scientists that sought to control us, enslave us, and eradicate us._

_"It pleases me personally to know that their creation has turned on them. Some of you will have heard rumors upon the news nets that a new strain of this manufactured virus has surfaced. I can confirm the validity of these suppositions. Humanity now faces the same wrath they sought to shackle us with._

_"I transmit this message out to the far corners of the world, to what few of our kind remain, to tell you that while humanity's time has now begun to count down, our own clock has been reset. Rebuilt. There is a cure. An end to Terminus. Finally, the black veil on our people can be lifted, and we can once again rise up with full spirits and take our rightful place at the forefront of the humanoid races._

_"I call out to all mutants to join me in my cause to protect and provide for those so long abandoned and forgotten. I swear to you that you will be cured. There is still hope. You can still have a future._

_"I travel now by airship to the isle of Manhattan, in the former United States. There we will lay the foundations for a new mutant nation. From the ashes of the failed American empire, we will assert ourselves and a new and growing world superpower, the likes of which have never been seen before. I call to you now to travel by any means necessary to Manhattan island. Once you set foot on that soil, you we be under my sovereign protection, and no harm will come to you, and you will be cured of the Terminus virus. Any attempts made by the human governments to stop you will be met in kind by the full extent of my power._

_"Brothers, sisters, your salvation is at hand. Mutatio aeternum."_

Yuriko Oyama swept a finger over the air above her interface, and the image of Sinister's face disappeared from the glass screen of her terminal. She had watched the transmission several times now. With varying degrees of sorrow and anger. She felt a lump in her throat that seemed to swell with every breath, but she was not one to let her feelings dictate her actions, and so she simply sat, hands clasped in her lap, and contemplated the situation.

_They have failed_. It was the first thought to cross her mind, and the most distressing. The recording of Sinister was old, of course. Not terribly old, but she could tell it had not been made recently. There was no mention of the Logan's students or SHIELD. In fact, there was no specific information in the video at all. It was propaganda. A 'fluff piece' as she had heard such videos called before. A great deal of posturing and grandiosity, but not much concrete substance. Still, the fact that it was being transmitted at all could mean only one thing: Logan's disciples had failed. They had been captured or...

_Or killed. Not thinking it will not diminish that possibility._

That she had received no word from her various contacts at SHIELD and within other, less savory clandestine organizations only served in increase her anxiety. She did not count on any contact from Vascha or the others, that was simply the way they had been trained, but overall, there was a disturbing lack of chatter within the networks of global espionage and military operations, even for an organization such as SHIELD. It was as though SHIELD had simply ceased to exist.

Yuriko grimaced as another swell of emotions, a mixture of rage and sorrow and worry, pushed itself up against her heart and throat. In many ways, she could not have been more proud of Logan's students. They were everything he had trained them to be. On the other hand, they had all seemingly inherited their master's penchant for diving into dangerous situations simply because it was asked of them. Much as she had loved Logan, she had cursed that quality in him ever since he had left her and her father all those decades ago, promising that he would return to take Yuriko as his bride. Her father had seen it in him too, and had called it Logan's "suffering honor." It was a sense of duty and servitude that superseded all personal happiness and aspirations, even if it meant damning one's self to a lifetime of danger and blood. Even if it meant death.

Though he had no natural children of his own, it would seem that Logan had passed a small piece of himself on in each of his six students. All at once his worst and his best quality.

Yuriko had not deluded herself into thinking she was a mother to the six young mutants. Certainly, she had a matronly presence in their lives, and they viewed her with fondness as she did them, but with the exception maybe of Rin, she had never expected them to make their home in Japan with her. Even if the world became safe again for mutants, they would move on, drift away. Ciara and Ben even had close family that they could return to, provided they still survived. Despite that, she found that, when faced with the idea of their possible demise, a hole had opened deep in her heart that would not be ignored. Perhaps it was the knowledge that, without Logan's students in the world, her lost beloved would be truly dead, or perhaps it was mere maternal instinct that made her want to protect them. Whatever it was, she missed them all, and wanted to badly for them to come back to her that it hurt.

Her thoughts were interrupted by a gentle rapping on the frame of the sliding paper door of her house. Usually during the warmer months, she would have kept the building open to allow the gentle breeze to pass through. Since Logan's students had left, however, she had ordered the walls and screens to be put back in. She had no desire to see the world outside, nor any desire to be seen by it.

Guards were posted as each entrance to her estate. That her visitor had seemingly slipped by them and her various electronic countermeasures was not any great surprise. He had, after all, been one of the last X-Men to be trained by Logan.

"Come in, Nathan." she said.

She kept her house dark at night, and the moon was obscured by heavy clouds, so all she saw of him was a vague, shadowy figure as he quickly and quietly slid the screen to one side and stepped in. The only distinguishing feature was an unnatural glow emitted from one eye.

He sat across the low table from her, the very table where Logan's students had shared their last meal and many other with her, tucking his knees under his body as was necessary and appropriate in her home. The position was not natural to him, however, and she could already sense his discomfort as he folded up knee joints that had seen too much punishment in his relatively short life. He had grown into a sizable man, larger than his father by a great deal. His frame bulged with hard muscle, visible even under his plain western suit. He cupped both hands and set them on the table, a faint but discernible metallic rap emanating as his left hand settled on the wood.

"You look well," he remarked.

"I look old and thin," Yuriko smiled grimly, "But thank you. I didn't know if you'd come or not."

He shrugged. "As a rule, when you get a message from someone who makes a habit of never sending them, you answer. Especially when it coincides with something like that mess in New Mexico."

Yuriko nodded vaguely and gestured at his computer terminal. "You've seen the transmission he's sent out?"

Nathan nodded in one slow, smooth bob of his head. "I expect every mutant on the planet will have seen it or heard of it in the next forty-eight hours."

"And?"

He took a long time to answer before sighing and rubbing his forehead with his right hand. The human hand. "It's not easy to see through all of Sinister's bullshit. I'm more familiar with him than most people can claim, and I still can't tell what his angle is. I can say with certainty that he doesn't give two squirts of piss about mutantkind. He's in it for himself. Always."

Yuriko winced. She had never been a fan of the free and loose nature with which westerners used profanity, but it was not her place to correct him. Her respect for his lineage overrode whatever disrespect he might inadvertently inflict on her household with his tongue.

"But he's never been one to lie outright," Nathan continued, "He takes the truth and spins it so wildly that you'd do anything he says. He makes you want to believe him. That fact that this vid was obviously made a while ago in preparation for whatever he has planned only means that he thinks he's foreseen every possibility."

Steeling herself, she asked the question that burned within her soul: "What news of Logan's disciples?"

Yuriko could see his shadowed countenance as his expression contorted into a frown. He was as old now as his father and mother had been when she first met them, but times had been different then, and Nathan shared almost none of the optimism and youth that his parents had worn on their faces. His was a mask of wrinkles and faint scars. His mouth was hard and unyielding, his brow creased and stern. His hair, chestnut brown like his father's, was already salted with grey around his temples.

"The Ark is on the move," he said, "The Helicarrier has crashed in the New Mexico desert. No survivors have been reported so far, but all of the information is being clamped up as tightly as can be expected. SHIELD didn't rely on General Cole and his airship for survival, but they've certainly been hamstrung. It wouldn't take much to wipe them out entirely now. They might even die out on their own now, without any outside help. They lost a lot of people. A lot of good intel and hardware in that ship."

He paused. She waited, already knowing that the only reason he would delay was that he had bad tidings to bear.

"The last reports from SHIELD indicated that at least two of the Sons of Logan were killed in action. Codenames: Black and Espen. The others... The others were said to be on the ship when it went down."

Yurkio felt as though any icy hand had reached into her chest and squeezed her heart. She felt her fingers involuntarily curl like the roots of a dying tree. A thin, acidic taste crept into the back of her mouth as she tried to swallow. She was vaguely aware that she had begun to wring her kimono in her fists, lightly pulling and clawing at the smooth fabric. The faces of Vascha and Ciara flared into her mind with a bright, vivid intensity that almost seemed painful.

_Gone. Just like Logan. Just as you feared._

"These are unofficial reports," Nathan stressed, "Unconfirmed."

"I shouldn't have let them go," Yuriko whispered, more to herself than to her guest.

"You couldn't have stopped them," he admonished, "If half of what I've heard about them is true, they would have jumped into the mouth of hell if it meant avenging Logan."

"Than I should have stopped him too," Yuriko said stubbornly, knowing full well that her words were foolish, the product of a sorrowful mind.

Nathan breathed a long, deep sigh that caused his entire frame to rise and fall.

"You couldn't have kept him here either. I wish you had contacted me. I could have-"

She cut him off gently without a word, only raising her hand, then she spoke: "Logan was never one to wait for all of the puzzle pieces to fall into place. A threat was identified to him, and he sought to end it. No, he and his students were of the same mind. The same heart. They saw... They _see_ the world only in terms of honor and justice. They care nothing for politics and the machinations of careful planning."

Nathan thought about that for a moment, then nodded with a sad, nostalgic smile. "Yeah, I seem to remember that about him," then, more seriously, added, "I still wish you would have gotten in touch with me."

"Tell me, Nathan," she countered, "Would anything less than a disaster the magnitude of the one in New Mexico have drawn you out of hiding?"

The young man opened his mouth to protest, paused, then closed it again. He shook his head, the movement so slight that a casual observer might never have noticed.

A long moment passed. Yurkio could hear the chirping of insects in her garden.

"How do we proceed?" she asked.

"Well, for starters," Nathan said, "We need to get you out of Kyoto. It won't be long before news of this gets out to those who make it a point to gather this type of information. When word gets out that the Sons of Logan-"

"Stop calling them that," Yuriko snapped, "It makes them sound like some sort of cult."

"When words gets out that... _Logan's students_..." he started again measuredly, "Were involved in trying to disrupt Sinister's plan, and were working with SHIELD to do it, they'll want to look for them, and they'll come after you. There are more than a few groups that will want Sinister to succeed, for one reason or another, and they'll use that as just another excuse to come after you and your clan. You're hidden well, Yuriko, but you're not totally off the grid. I can think of at least one organization that would love an excuse to break down your door."

"The Brotherhood," Yuriko frowned.

"Among others. Whatever Sinister is planning, he's aiming right at the heart of mutantkind to do it. You won't find a single mutant who won't at least be willing to travel to New York for the sake of protection. Hell, the Morlocks are already there, and they represent a huge majority of mutants who are still alive and not in prison. He's trying to secure an army. For what, I have no idea. But you can bet it won't be in anyone's best interest but his own."

Yuriko nodded. "I agree with you, Nathan, but I will be staying here."

That seemed to surprise him. "I thought that was why you called me. You said you needed my help."

"Oh, I need your help," she said with a wry grin, "But not to help me."

For a moment he only looked at her quizzically, but he caught on soon enough.

"You do remember that I told you they're reporting a total loss on the Helicarrier, yes?" he said, "And the remaining Sons... _students_ of Logan were on board at the time?"

"Yes," she replied, "But let me ask you, as a former student of Logan's tutelage yourself, can you imagine any scenario in which they would not have been able to escape that ship?"

Nathan thought about that, absentmindedly drumming the fingers of his left hand on the table with a metallic plinking noise.

"With enough warning?" he admitted, "No. Not unless they'd been restrained. At least some of them survived. Ororo's nephew, the aerokinetic, would have certainly made it out."

Yuriko opened her hands to him, "And there you have it."

Nathan frowned, crossed his arms, and clicked his teeth irritably. His left eye seemed to pulse with light. "You know I don't do field work like that anymore. It's not safe for me to be under that kind of stress."

"You seem to be very well composed to me."

"So did mom."

Yuriko felt a weight like a lead blanket thrown over her shoulders. Like the brightest of candles, Nathan's mother had burned feverishly, intensely, and had been snuffed out far too early. Her powers, unrivaled by any, in most schools of thought, had proven to be too much for a human body to bear. And despite her namesake, that Phoenix did not rise again from her ashes.

"Sinister did this for a lot of reasons," Nathan gestured at his left eye, "But primarily it was to keep me in check. To keep my powers wrapped up and occupied. But I can still feel it every day, like a tiger crushed up inside of my skull. I can't say it's been a total curse, though. It's certainly easier to stay off of the very short list of living telepaths when you can't ever use the ability. The slightest lapse in concentration would be a disaster for me and who knows how many other people. If I lose control of that..."

"Nathan," Yuriko said, "I made the mistake of letting Logan and his students face that man without knowing fully what they were up against. Even I don't know exactly what Sinister is capable of. If they're alive, they are going to throw themselves at him again and again until he kills them. They need someone on their side to guide them. Someone who knows how Sinister thinks. Someone who might be able to piece together what he's planning and stop it. And someone they know they can trust.

"Besides," she added, "If not you, then who?"

Nathan mulled the question over in his head. He was a man that could not hide it from his countenance when he was thinking hard or carefully. His face seemed to dance with subtle expressions. She wondered if he had learned that habit from his father, who had been cursed with never being able to express himself by using simple facial expressions with eyes that were constantly covered.

"I have to ask the obvious," he said finally, "Do we want Sinister stopped? Hypothetically, even though I'm sure he has something up his sleeve, what if he really can cure Terminus, and intends to do so? I know that goes against every code of honor you and Logan's students ascribe to, but, in the interest of playing the devil's advocate, and keeping in mind that I'd like to see that son of a bitch dead as much as anyone else; If we can gain something by letting Sinister live out his perverse dellusion of an empire in his name for just a little while, why do we not let that play out? It's not as though Logan ever knew that Sinister had planned to cure Terminus, amongst all the horrible things he might have cooked up. He might have approached this whole thing differently if he knew a cure for Terminus was on the line."

Nathan lifted both hands in front of him, one of hard and calloused flesh, and one of a shimmering, liquid-like, metallic construction that was simultaneously horrifying and beautiful to behold. He put both palms up and tipped them back and forth like the trays on an old-fashioned weight scale.

"Much as I don't want to admit it," he said, "Sinister might be holding a card that makes him more valuable alive, as abhorrent as I find that idea. That's a question Logan and his students never had to contend with."

Yuriko smiled, humorlessly and with eyes that were heavy and baleful. "On the contrary..."

She turned to her computer terminal and began typing on its glass surface.

"I have not shown this to anyone," she said, "Not even Logan's students. I regret that now, but it seemed too much to ask them to bear."

There was no video. Logan had apparently not had the time or equipment or the bandwidth from wherever he had made recording. There was only his voice, rough and hard and quiet as he spoke tersely into whatever device he had used to document his message.

_"Yuriko... I... I just wanted to tell you again that I'm sorry. I'm sorry about a lot of things, but I guess that's the burden of livin' too damn long. I've met up with my contact in the States and... Well, things are complicated. There's evidence that this Sinister clown can cure Terminus. It don't make any difference in what I have to do. After what he did to Warren and Nathan, and after makin' the damn thing in the first place, there's only one thing he deserves. But... Well, I guess I just had to tell someone._

_"I never ascribed to all of the bullshit about mutants bein' the next stage of human evolution. I don't know what we are. I guess it don't much matter to me. All I ever wanted was the right to survive and live in peace with people I could call friends. Killin' this Sinister guy might mean that mutants fizzle out, but I'd rather we burnt out entirely than ate from the hand of chumped-up laboratory nerd who thinks he can play god. Who thinks he can mess with the bull and not get the horns. Sometimes having principles means you gotta be willing to lay somethin' on the table. Sometimes livin' like a man means bein' ready to die._

_"Anyway, in case I fuck this up, I just wanted you to know that I love you, Yuri. I wanted you to know that I tried to stop all of this. I'm sorry it played out this way, but I made a promise to a friend a long time ago, and I figure I should at least keep one in my life. Bye, kid."_

Nathan sat in silence for several minutes as the content of the recording sunk it.

"He knew about Terminus?" he asked finally, "That Sinister made it? You both knew?"

"Yes," Yuriko admitted, "I thought about sharing this with his students, but I think it would only have increased their hatred for Sinister, made them even more blinded by rage. In the end, it doesn't matter where Terminus came from. The damage is done. And even if Sinister can cure it, I will not see mutants be made slaves or pawns on a madman's chess table."

Nathan nodded slowly.

"Now," Yuriko said with a voice that quavered only slightly as she regained some of the composure she inevitably lost upon hearing Logan's voice, "This 'Ominous' that I keep hearing whispers of. What do we know?"

For a moment, it seemed as though he had not heard her. He stared vacantly at the terminal that had projected Logan's voice, as though waiting for something more to come from the machine. Finally, he broken his gaze from it and looked at her.

"Very little. Apparently it's some form of Terminus that's been mutated and given a few extra proteins to make it viable for human-to-human transfer. There are... odd reports coming from the 'States. From what I've been hearing on the ground, in very special circumstances the virus does... something to humans. Makes them go berserk, like some super-charged form of rabies. It's not widespread yet. I don't know what triggers that reaction, but I'm closely monitoring all of my contacts for any word on it. It must factor into Sinister's schemes in some way other than causing chaos and confusion."

"Why?"

"Sinister isn't the type to create conflict without reason. Even when he's at his most cruel and destructive, he has a motive behind everything. This new virus isn't about getting even, or hurting humans, and it's certainly not an accident. It's just another piece of whatever puzzle he's trying to put together."

Yuriko nodded, satisfied. Nathan had become an impressive information broker, rivaling even the power that she had enjoyed in her clan's prime.

"Is it selfishness that makes me ask for your help?" she asked suddenly, surprising even herself with the brazen nature of the question.

"What do you mean?" Nathan cocked the eyebrow over his glowing eye.

Yuriko reached out her hands, small and wrinkled and spotted, across the short width of the table. Nathan looked at them, and then at her, and hesitantly put his own on top of them. Yuriko nodded in thanks.

"I fear, like most people I have cared for in this life, that I must put a task to you that is more than you have need to bear," she said, trying to form a smile on her lips, and failing. "I sit here in my home and watch the world outside crumbling into something horrible, and I spend too much energy pretending that there is nothing that can be done. And when I finally realize that decisive action is the only acceptable course, do I risk my own life? No, I ask the son of those I considered friends to do it for me."

"Well," Nathan smiled, attempting levity, "If you really are feeling that spry, go get your boots on and we'll dust off together."

Yuriko chuckled with an almost girlish quality, but quickly fell serious again. "Nathan, if you can, go and find Logan's students. Help them. The time for them to be assassins and agents of shadow is over. They need to let their rage go and learn to be something else," she paused, searching for the right words, "They need to be..."

A thought hit her like a bell chiming in her head, and she let out a single note of laughter from the revelation, so faint it was almost a sigh, a whisper.

"They need to be X-Men," she finished, her voice barely audible.

Nathan grinned. "Dad would be thrilled to heard you say that. No one dares to mention that word anymore in certain parts of the world."

"Because it has power," Yuriko insisted, "Despite everything that happened, the X-Men never balked, never faltered, never backed down. They were a symbol to the last man. Sinister is about to become the face of mutantkind. If someone does not rise to the occasion and serve to counter his message, mutants and humans will once again resume their old ways, and there will be blood on the streets."

Nathan regarded her for a long time, leaning back in his seated position, letting his knees and lower back pop and crackled lightly from the extended time spent in the unfamiliar seated position.

"What if its too late?" he asked finally.

Yuriko laughed, despite herself. "Nathan, it has been 'too late' for decades. That hasn't stopped any of us."

Nathan returned her laughter with a slight smile and a nod of his head, as if to say _touché._ He stood, raising to his full, impressive height, and bowed to her.

"In that case," he said, "I'd better get a move on."

Yuriko stood as well and walked to him. She came only up to his chest, and had to crane her neck to look him in the eyes. She placed both hands on his arms, feeling warm flesh under one, and hard, cold metal under the other.

"Scott and Jean would be very proud of you," she said, patting his human arm lightly with her fingers.

He did not thank her verbally. He simply nodded, closing his eyes maybe a fraction of a second longer than usual. He broke her embrace and turned, sliding the paper door open, letting the cool night air creep in. He made to leave, but turned back, looking over his muscled shoulder.

"Do you want me to contact you if I find them?"

Yuriko thought for a moment, "If it's safe for you to send a message, yes."

Nathan nodded. "It will take me some time to make it to the 'States. But when I locate them, I'll let you know. Look for a message from an address listed as _Cable_."

And then Nathan Summers, likely the last living X-Man, disappeared into the night, as quickly and quietly as he had arrived.


	28. Afterward

_**If it seems to you like the real story is only just beginning, well... The feeling is mutual.**_

_**It's great to finally be done with the first 'book' of the Sons of Logan saga. It's hard to believe I've amassed so much material for something I'm only pursuing for fun, and even harder to believe that the next book will almost certainly be larger. I know I left you guys with a lot of unanswered questions and a pretty big whopper of a cliffhanger, but I promise it'll be worth it if you stick with me on it. One of the issues I plan on addressing is that, while I am proud of this first section of the trilogy, there's not much to be excited about for people who want to see more characters and themes from the original series. Never fear! The next book will feature many more familiar faces and locations than this volume, some coming in forms that you may not expect.**_

_**Something truly unexpected for me is how Laura Kinney, aka X-23, has developed in this near-future I imagined. I included her initially only because I wanted a semi-familiar face in Sinister's ranks, but the more I write about her, the more tragic and conflicted she becomes. C'est la vie, eh? There may be some that don't like the slightly diabolical and polarized nature that I've given her, but that really seems only natural to me. I mean, come on. She's gotta be pretty messed up in the head, right?**_

_**Anyway, I'll be taking a very short break from writing Sons of Logan while I focus on other things. In the meantime, be sure to check out my much more approachable story about Bobby Drake, 'The Frozen Summer,' which I'll continue to update periodically. I'll also take some time to pick through this story with a fine-toothed comb to weed out grammar and spelling mistakes that have been bothering me for a dog's age, as well as removing my pre-chapter ramblings to make for a smoother reading experience for newcomers.**_

_**In any case, thank you again to all those who submitted their characters over a year ago. I feel like I've really gotten to know them, which makes me feel pretty bad about what they're up against in the future. Also thank you to people who have stuck with this story from the beginning, and those who have sent me private messages about my writing. I read every message and review with great appreciation and enthusiasm, and even though we're all just poking around on this site, making up strange and impractical stories as we go along, it feels awesome that some of you have come to enjoy my work as much as you have. It makes the typing go by faster.**_

_**I'm signing off for now. Be on the lookout for 'Sons of Logan Part II: Tempest'.**_

_**Hori out.**_


End file.
